


A Spirit Detective

by Chuthulhu (Mangaluva)



Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: But I managed to squeeze in a few more, Child Murder, Dead Kudou Shinichi | Edogawa Conan, Gen, Ghosts, I know this series already has a lot of murder, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kudou Shinichi and Edogawa Conan are separate people, Non-Chronological, Past Child Abuse, Past Kudou Shinichi | Edogawa Conan/Mouri Ran, author has not kept up with the manga in like three years, but events of the fic should take place in about the first 450 chapters anyway
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-11-09 01:18:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 29
Words: 19,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20845169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mangaluva/pseuds/Chuthulhu
Summary: Edogawa Conan is a weird kid. Everybody can see that a mile away. But right now, he's what Kudo Shinichi needs to keep solving cases--including his own.





	1. Hattori I

**Author's Note:**

> Happy First of Halloween, folks! And so I arise like the fucking fandom cryptid I am with a not-quite-new spoopy fic that I'm gonna try and post daily this month, to get me into good Nano habits. I originally started posting this on tumblr last year, then kinda drifted off of it when I a) realized that I had no idea where the plot was going and b) hit ~a mental breakdown~ *off-key kazoo playing The Final Countdown*
> 
> But now! I have a plot! And it doesn't require that I know a single goddamn thing that's happened in the manga over the past three years! I keep meaning to catch up but I have just not had the emotional energy to deal with Gosho's life choices at all. I'm moving home next month, though, and very excited about it, so hopefully that'll carry me through. I have been editing and fixing up the fic, including some slight changes to the format and new details based on the plot that now exists, so even if you read this last year I hope you'll enjoy rereading it now!
> 
> Anyway, check them tags and bear the tone of Miracle and Moonlight Sonata in mind; thar be dark shit here. I promised a sequel to A Phantom Thief years ago and never delivered, and this is not that, but could be considered a... spiritual successor B)
> 
> Anyway, I hope you, uh... I was gonna say "hope you enjoy" but I don't think that's the purpose of this kinda fic. I hope you find yourself compelled to return by dark fascination, then, just like me to this fucking fandom

Shinichi’s head is spinning. He’s running out of time but dammit, _dammit_, he’s spent so much time clearing up that murder that he hasn’t gotten to speak to Ran, to _tell_ her anything, to apologize–

“Oi, Kudo, you sure it’s just a cold?” Hattori asks, all concern, like this whole situation isn’t _his_ goddamn fault. He can’t _know, _admittedly, even Shinichi doesn’t really understand _how_ this happened…

No time. Shinichi is running out of time, he can _feel_ it burning down. He rushes past Hattori, who reaches out to grab his arm, calling his name, and–misses. Hattori’ll figure he just missed Shinichi’s arm, right? Only logical explanation.

Then the pain is finally ebbing away, but so is everything else. Shinichi can’t feel the wall under his hand, or the floor under his feet, or the warm air from the heaters. He can’t feel _anything_…

“Ran,” he croaks as she comes running down the hall, dragging a confused-looking doctor, her beautiful face twisted in concern.

But she doesn’t hear him call her name, doesn’t see him standing there, and when she passes right through him, she doesn’t feel him at all.

His time is up. Again.


	2. Heiji II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shinichi’s owned omamori. Everybody’s owned omamori, and he’s never known a single person who genuinely thinks they have some kind of spiritual power past the age of about nine. But these days, he’ll believe anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I say there's gonna be daily posting this month? Spoopy updates daily!

“Oi, kiddo. Do ya know what this is?”

Conan’s eyes slide from side to side almost imperceptibly, looking for an out, but Ran has already left the room looking for him. Everybody else is caught up in restraining Toganou, calling the police, and comforting Fujisawa, who is approaching hysterics as it sinks in that he was nearly murdered over a _book_. If anybody’s noticed Hattori leaning down to talk to Conan, they probably think he’s just comforting the kid by showing him…

…an omamori. Damn. _Damn_. 

Shinichi’s owned omamori. Everybody’s owned omamori, and he’s never known a single person who genuinely thinks they have some kind of spiritual power past the age of about nine. But these days, he’ll believe anything.

“It’s an omamori, right, Heiji-niichan?” Conan chirps brightly, hiding his own tension with practised ease. “Some kids in my class have them on their schoolbags! They told me all about them when I moved here from America! Somebody gave you that to protect you, right?”

“Yep,” Hattori says, smiling fondly at the little cloth bag for a moment. “Someone _real_ important ta me, so heads were gonna roll if I’d found out anybody’d slipped somethin’ in it. Some kinda heatin’ element, maybe.”

“What’s that, Heiji-niichan?” Conan asks, frowning. If Shinichi could still sweat, he’d be sweating bullets. He should’ve been more careful, but he’s already gotten so damn used to nobody knowing he’s there…

“Yeah. Been warmin’ up at random times. Real weird,” Hattori comments, with blatantly affected nonchalance. “Nothin’ funny in it–not that anybody coulda got anythin’ in it, anyways, since I don’t take it off much. It’s never done nothin’ like this before, ‘cept once, back when I met _you_.” He gives Conan a piercing look that has the boy taking a nervous step back, glancing around. “An’ Kudo. Poor guy was lookin’ so sick, when he started runnin’ so suddenly I thought he was fallin’ over and tried ta steady ‘im up, an’…” He shivers, looking at his hands. “My damn hand went _through_ ‘im. I _know _I didn’t just miss his whole damn arm. My hand-eye co-ordination’s better’n that. An’ I _saw_ my hand go _through_ his goddamn arm, just when this thing got warm all of a sudden…”

He waves the omamori in the air, and Shinichi quickly moves to avoid it. Conan’s eyes flicker for a moment, following the movement, and Heiji’s eyes narrow. He swings his hand experimentally in the space Conan had glanced at, and this time Shinichi doesn’t move fast enough. The Osakan’s eyes instantly go to his omamori, still in his other hand, the moment his fingers graze Shinichi’s arm.

“He’s here, ain’t he?” Hattori says quietly. “Kudo. Is he somethin’ I need protectin’ from? Or somethin’ protectin’ _you_?”

Shinichi looks around. Ran isn’t back–she must’ve gone upstairs, damn, the _one_ time it would’ve been helpful for her to be hovering protectively at Conan’s side to drive off baseball-capped weirdos–but some of the others are starting to give Hattori odd looks for flailing his arms around randomly. Conan’s eyes are more obviously flickering to Shinichi, too, the child growing increasingly desperate for support, reassurance, guidance, _something._

“It’s okay,” Shinichi sighs. “We’d better tell him. Before he makes a bigger scene.” 

Conan goes pale at that, then tugs at Hattori’s trouser leg. “He’s here,” the child says quietly. “He said to tell you before you make a big scene. Please don’t? Nobody else knows…”

“What?” Hattori says, glowering around until everybody looks hastily away again. “‘Course I ain’t gonna tell nobody, don’t wanna look crazy.” He tucks his omamori back into his shirt with a last thoughtful look at the charm. “…Nobody? Not even that Neechan you’re always with?”

Conan, relieved to be back to a familiar routine, parrots Shinichi’s words perfectly. “No… she doesn’t,” he says sadly. “Knowing would break her heart. Anyway… she’s scared of ghosts.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a few omamori. A coworker told me that they only have any power if you get it as a gift, rather than buying it for yourself, and that if you don't open the bag, because that lets the blessing out. Most of my students have at least one dangling off their schoolbag. Japanese people in general aren't really religious, and buying omamori is more of a polite thing or an expression of affection than a genuine belief in spiritual power. Kazuha's genuine belief in the omamori's power is pretty unusual, but then so is keeping an omamori more than a year, apparently. 
> 
> Omamori CAN respond to ghosts here because it's my story and I do what I want


	3. Heiji III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1 new message from Heiji-niichan

_So how come I could see Kudo at that diplomat_ _’s place but not at the Holmes tour?_

_ **Hi Heiji-niichan! Shinichi-niichan can** _ _ **’t use the phone so I’m gonna type for him. The next text is gonna be from Shinichi-niichan.** _

_ **Because you** _ _ **’re a moron and you got the kid drunk. ** _

_Oi, don_ _’t go teaching that kid to call people stuff like that! Anyway, what, the kid passes out and you pop up?_

_ **No, though even if that was how it worked, you shouldn** _ _ **’t be giving alcohol to little kids. ** _

_ **Anyway, Conan was too passed out to help me like he usually does, so I was stuck watching you get the case all wrong and nearly arrest an innocent man. ** _

_ **I got so desperate to be heard that** _ _ **… I dunno, all of a sudden I found myself leaning against the wall instead of falling through it. ** _

_ **Took a lot out of me to sustain it for as long as I did. I sort of** _ _ **… passed out? For a few days. I don’t know how to explain it.** _

_ **Hi! It** _ _ **’s Conan! And it was scary. I thought Shinichi-niichan was gone. I was really happy when I saw him again a few days after, but he seemed real tired. I didn’t know ghosts could get tired, but I never saw one do that before. Okay I’m gonna type for Shinichi-niichan again.** _

_Actually, I wanna ask, kiddo, how come _ _ you _ _ can see and hear him all the time?_

‘_**Cause I can. I can see lots of others, too, but mostly they go away soon. Now that Shinichi-niichan’s helping, some of them go away really fast.**_

_So why_ _’s _ _ he _ _ still here?_

‘_**Cause we haven’t caught **__**his**__** murderer yet.**_


	4. Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, all Shinichi can do is watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this one in the morning instead of the evening because Friday night is hell night for getting in late and having to be ready to wake up for the early shift on Saturday. Which, due to my weird timezone, probably means it's showing up the same day as the last one. Oh well!

Shinichi sees Conan in Ran’s arms as she restrains the boy from running into the fire, and, assured that the reckless kid is safe, plunges back in himself.

Okay, he doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on with calling Conan reckless, but at least he’s _already_ dead. Too many people here are dead.

“ASOU! ASAI! _WHOEVER THE HELL YOU ARE_!” he yells, running back to the piano, where the doctor is sitting again, clutching their chest as they cough up smoke. Shinichi reaches out, even knowing that his hands will go right through them. “YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS! _YOU DID IT! YOUR FAMILY IS AT REST_!”

They are all gone–the pianist, his wife, his daughter, those sad, burning ghosts who’ve been trailing Dr Narumi from the moment the Mouri agency arrived on the island, have finally faded away with the murder of Nishimoto. Now his ghost, along with Kawashima’s and Kuroiwa’s, hovers over the doctor as they put their shaking hands to the piano and begin to play.

“He’s gonna burn, just like his family, huh?” Kawashima sneers. “If he wanted to die, he didn’t have to take us all with him…”

“Shut up, Kawashima,” Mayor Kuroiwa says darkly. “Just shut up and listen.”

Even coughing and gasping for air, the doctor’s piano playing is beautiful.

“You should go, detective,” Nishimoto says shakily, hands first passing through Shinichi and then finally focusing enough to push him away. “You aren’t responsible for this. You don’t have to watch this. Burning is… is a horrible death.”

“If we could just… this doesn’t have to happen!” Shinichi protests. The doctor’s playing begins to falter as burning strings snap inside of the piano, and they collapse off of the stool, suffocating on the smoke. “One more death WON’T MAKE ANYTHING BETTER!”

“You know as well as I do that he can’t see or hear us, anyway,” Kuroiwa says, crouching by the dying doctor. “He’s lucky. He’s passing out from the smoke. He won’t feel it when he burns.”

“Get the hell out of here,” Kawashima snaps, helping Nishimoto shove Shinichi away. “You’re no more use now than you have been since you arrived on this island. What good is solving the case if you couldn’t save _any_ of us?”

The coughing has stopped. The doctor lies still on the floor. They aren’t dead yet, but it’s only a matter of time. The piano itself is ablaze, and the hem of the doctor’s dress catches.

Shinichi does not leave. He watches. It seems like all he can do, sometimes, to bear witness.

By dawn, the last member of the Asou family is ashes like the rest, and the only ghost left is Shinichi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no firm opinions on how to read Dr Narumi's gender but I really don't want to know Gosho's opinion on the subject and so I commit to nothing


	5. Toichi I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Phantom Thief appears.

“You’re no ordinary boy, are you?”

Shinichi smirks when he spots the helicopters approaching, the smile widening in pride at the confident way Conan says, “Edogawa Conan, Detective.” When they started doing this, the child had stumbled over the words, saying them too quickly as if afraid somebody would take them away before he’d finished with them. He’s _earned_ the title, though–he’s a quick study and notices details on crime scenes faster than Shinichi sometimes. He’ll have a reputation on par with Shinichi’s former glory by middle school, of that there is no doubt–assuming it will be _safe_ for him to have a reputation by then.

Shinichi feels guilty, sometimes (and sometimes he feels guilty about not feeling guilty more often), about getting a little kid to help him solve murder cases. Sure, _his_ dad had let Shinichi follow him to cases as a kid, but Kudo Yuusaku did a lot of things that probably aren’t exactly aspirational when it comes to raising kids. The fact that Conan had apparently sen his first warm corpse before ever meeting Shinichi may count for something, but it comes with its own incredibly worrying set of mysteries.

“A detective, huh?” Kid muses, tipping his head, almost like he’s looking at– “and you? Ah, but wait, I know that face… the inestimable Kudo Shinichi, likewise a detective. What a shame it is to see you like this.”

Shinichi freezes—almost literally. The sharp shock he feels makes the temperature around him dip, and Conan shivers as his breath mists in the air. “You can see me,” Shinichi says in shock.

“Well, I could just be talking to the air,” Kid says, waving a hand lazily. A police radio appears in it. “Nakamori-keibu will vouch for my sanity, or lack thereof, I’m sure. Why don’t we invite him in so you can ask?” He clears his throat, then yells, “THIS IS SUPERINTENDENT CHAKI! ALL UNITS TO THE ROOF OF HAIDO CITY HOTEL! KID HAS BEEN SPOTTED!”

In a voice nothing like the one he’d been using a moment ago.

“Shinichi-niichan? I don’t think he’s using a machine to change his voice like that…” Conan whispers as Kid fluidly switches to Nakamori’s voice, then flips through several other voices that are presumably other officers. As if to make a point, Kid raises the hand that was in his pocket, wiggling his fingers in a gesture of _nothing in this hand_ before continuing to change voices back and forth fluidly.

“He’s a mimic,” Shinichi realizes. Conan nods, looking tense. “A _good_ one. I didn’t realize he was doing that _naturally_ at the clock tower…”

“Was this what you were after, Tantei-san?” Kid asks, grinning ridiculously as helicopters shine spotlights on him, the wind whipping his cape into the air dramatically.

_Show-off, _Shinichi thinks, with the bitterness of one who cannot be seen or heard by anybody except for one person–now two, apparently.

It isn’t long after Nakamori arrives that Kid declares them all April Fools and drops a flashbomb to vanish behind. Shinichi sees it fall and warns Conan in time for the kid to duck and cover his eyes, but Shinichi himself surges forwards. Light and darkness don’t affect his vision as much as they used to (_when he was alive_) and even if he can’t touch the thief, he can follow him–

But the Kid hasn’t moved, and even seems to have dropped the hanglider he’d popped up. The flashbomb only takes a couple of seconds to flare out, leaving Kid standing exactly where he was a moment before. Yet all of the Task Force are looking around frantically, yelling into radios, demanding a visual on Kid.

Kid waves a white-gloved hand directly in Nakamori’s face as the inspector growls in frustration, and the man doesn’t even blink. 

The thief winks at Shinichi. “You know, young man, a thief is an artist,” he declares, walking over to the edge of the roof past several oblivious officers, “but you? You’re nothing but a critic, seeking to pick apart masterpieces for the sake of it.” Then, with a tip of his hat, he simply… flies away.

Shinichi tries to follow–gravity doesn’t _have_ to affect him anymore, not if he doesn’t want it to–but Kid is much faster, and clearly better-practised.

In no time at all, the phantom thief is gone, and Shinichi is floating over Haido alone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep--in this AU, Toichi is still the one and only Kaitou Kid. He's a lot of fun to write.


	6. Toichi II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are many ways to describe the Kaitou Kid, but “quiet” and “unobtrusive” are not among them. But he seems to have practice looking and acting normal.

“He didn’t look tired like you did when he stopped being solid,” Conan muses. “Do you think he’s been dead all eight years? If it’s been a long time, maybe he’s had time to get _really_ good at it.”

Shinichi’s inclined to agree. Some things _do_ seem to get easier with practice. For a while after–well, before he encountered Conan, he hadn’t bothered to do anything about the blood trickle that appeared to be constantly dripping down his face from the memory of the blow to the head that Gin gave him. It was, to anybody who could see, the only indicator that he was dead, since his death hadn’t left any other marks_, _or even a body_._ He’d started trying to look, well, _less dead_ once there really _was_ somebody around who could see him, though there isn’t much that makes Conan flinch. He barely has to think about it anymore to look normal, or even to appear to wear different clothes from the ones he died in. For those who can see him, he probably looks like a normal teenager, while the newly dead sometimes look _awful._

It’s often the only hint that somebody is a ghost. Other tells are the person accidentally phasing through something solid, or desperately trying to get the attention of people who can’t seem to see or hear them. You don’t need to be a detective to draw conclusions from _that_. It isn’t like either Shinichi, as a ghost, or Conan, as whatever _he_ is, can sense auras or the like–a ghost who’s trying to be quiet and unobtrusive, or died in a way that didn’t leave many obvious marks, is a ghost they can miss completely until they find a corpse and realize it looks startlingly like that quiet person in the back.

There are many ways to describe the Kaitou Kid, but “quiet” and “unobtrusive” are not among them. But he seems to have practice looking and acting normal–in fact, unless he’d slipped a virus into Shinichi’s laptop (not that Shinichi would put it past him) he’d operated the entire Clock Tower Heist as if he were alive. He hadn’t _vanished_ the way he did on the roof of Haido Hotel until the end, when Shinichi had _really_ cornered him.

“Why not just ghost in and out of the scene? Why mess about with disguises and… all of this?” he asks in frustration in the bowels of the _Q. Selizabeth. __“_Why pretend you’re still…”

“Well, it’d be cheating otherwise, wouldn’t it?” the thief says, Ran’s features and voice melting away as he smoothly turns back into the Phantom Thief. _So much control over his appearance. He really _has_ been dead a long time__… “_At least, until _you_ came on the scene.”

“We’re detectives!” Conan insists. “Tell us who killed you and we can help you!”

“Getting the victim to help you solve crimes? Tsk, tsk, Tantei-kun, that is most _definitely_ cheating,” Kid says, tossing the Black Star to Conan and vanishing through the floor. Shinichi doesn’t bother trying to chase this time. Finding him flying over Haido was hard enough; finding him in the three-dimensional maze of the ship will be impossible.

“He keeps saying _cheating _like it’s a _game_,” Conan complains, wrapping the delicate pearl up carefully in his handkerchief. “People dying isn’t a _game_!”

“You’re right,” Shinichi agrees. Not for the first time, he wishes he could figured out _how_ he’d gone solid at the diplomat’s mansion so he can give the forlorn-looking kid a hug. The words of agreement seem to be enough, though. It gives him a pang to think of how much the smallest words of approval or encouragement _matter_ to the kid, this kid who should be getting a _normal_ childhood, just going to school and playing with friends and watching anime, not chasing murderers and thieves…

But it i_sn__’t_ a game when people are dying, and as much as he wishes it were otherwise, Conan is still the only one who could help.

And even if Kid has given up on solving his own murder, Shinichi _won__’t_.


	7. Akemi I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of all the people Shinichi would expect to see approaching the Mouri Agency at this hour, Hirota Masami is not among them.

Of all the people Shinichi would expect to see approaching the Mouri Agency at this hour, Hirota Masami is not among them. 

Not that he didn’t think her ghost must be floating around somewhere–Gin hasn’t been either caught or killed yet, as evidenced by the fact that Shinichi himself is still around. But he wasn’t able to find her, and _really_ didn’t expect her to come looking for _him_, or–

Conan. The kid had whispered something while she was dying, said it was his name, which is something he hasn’t even told _Shinichi_. He said he thought it’d comfort her. And sure, it’s not like she can tell anybody living, but…

“What are you _doing _here?” he asks bluntly. She starts, wide-eyed with shock at being _seen_. Blood is still dripping from her mouth, soaking the front of the clothes she died in. She hasn’t bothered to change her appearance. This is probably the first time anybody has seen or spoken to her since she died.

“I know you,” she says in surprise. “You’re… Kudo Shinichi, aren’t you? So you _did_ die. There was no body, so they weren’t sure…”

“Nobody is,” Shinichi says, turmoil rolling in his guts remembering all the nights he’s seen Ran crying in worry and fear until, finally, he manifested in that diplomat’s house, just for a little while. But appearing telling her he’s been busy on a secret case is just a stopgap, he knows. One day, everybody will have to know, for sure…

“Are you here to see–?” Hirota begins, but Shinichi cuts her off.

“Conan-kun’s asleep,” he says quickly. “His name’s Conan now. And he’s six and it’s two in the morning, so we’re not waking him up, not now he’s finally learned to sleep through Otchan’s snoring.”

Hirota nods, looking sadly up at the agency she visited in her last days alive. Is she wishing they’d stopped her in time? Figured her out, taken her into custody? Would that have saved her? Or would she have died in a cell instead of in a damp shipping yard?

“My sister’s dead,” she says abruptly. “She killed herself. _They_ drove her to it.”

“I’m sorry,” Shinichi says sincerely. Suicides don’t leave ghosts. It’s one of the tells for a faked suicide, if one that only Shinichi and Conan can generally perceive. “What was her name?”

“…Shiho,” Hirota whispers, her voice deep with unfathomable loneliness. “She was only eighteen. I couldn’t save her, and now…”

Now she’ll never even _see_ her sister again. “What’s _your_ real name?” he asks. “I know it’s not Hirota Masami. The police couldn’t find anything to identify you by. I’m afraid your ashes are in an anonymous urn in a public cemetery in Haido.”

“I don’t care,” Hirota says distantly. “There aren’t even ashes left of Shiho. Miyano Akemi,” she says, holding out her hand. 

Shinichi has to focus to shake it, though nowhere near what it took to manifest, thank goodness. Ghosts can phase through each other as easily as anything else if they aren’t trying. “Nice to meet you,” he says, filing the names _Miyano Akemi_ and _Miyano Shiho_ away in his mind.

He did a few interviews when he was alive, and they always asked after cases by the name of the murderer, unless a suitably catchy moniker had been attached to the murder(s). He knows it probably comes of the fact that the murderer’s name is what’s on the trial as much as anything else, but it’s always rubbed him the wrong way. His interest in a murderer’s name, their story, their _excuses_, only lasts as long as it takes to put together the pieces and extract a confession. Nobody deserves to be remembered for committing one of the worst crimes a human can commit, one way or another. But the victims, the ones who’ve had their lives cut short so unnaturally that their souls can’t even leave the Earth… 

Their names and faces, when he knows them, those he enshrines in his photographic memory. That, at least, he can keep alive.


	8. Heiji IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shinichi, via Conan, has an important question for Heiji.

“You should have let that bitch burn!” Nagato Mitsuaki rages, but he’s already fading away as the cuffs snap around Hyuga Miyuki’s wrists. Conan and Shinichi are pretty practised at ignoring the man’s ranting by now.

“Ya think we shoulda just… let ‘er go?” Hattori says quietly, so quietly Shinichi isn’t sure he intended for anyone to hear. “She’s gotta live the rest of ‘er life knowin’ what she did, without the folks she loves…”

“But… we stopped her,” Conan says, looking up at Shinichi. His eyes are wide, seeking… _something._ “Even if she’s going to suffer, it’s right that we stopped her, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Shinichi reassures him. “However much she’s suffering, it can’t be a patch on burning to death. Believe me, it’s _horrible_. Besides…” He watches the weeping murderess being led away. “Maybe she’s suffering, but she’s _alive. _I’d suffer _anything_ to be alive again, to have a chance at having a life again someday…”

“I’m sorry, Shinichi-niichan,” Conan says quietly. 

Hattori looks in the direction that Conan’s looking, shoving his hands in his pockets with a worried expression. “Sorry, Kudo,” he adds quietly. “Forget yer there, sometimes.”

“Tell him it’s fine, but…” Shinichi begins.

_What_ _’s the point of solving the case if you didn’t save anybody?_

“…if you’re going to drive a culprit into a corner just to let them die,” he says, “how are you any better than a murderer?”

Conan nods with a relieved smile. “You’re right,” he says. “We did the right thing. Heiji-niichan?” he adds, repeating Shinichi’s question.

“Damn, Kudo…” Hattori whispers. “Never thought of it that way.” He side-eyes the jug they’d refilled with water to foil Miyuki’s suicide attempt. “So… would she have been a ghost too, anyway? She’d keep sufferin’ either way?”

“No, suicides don’t,” Conan explains. He doesn’t need Shinichi’s prompting to explain this. “But the other ghost, the one she killed, went away when she confessed. He was the only one, ‘cause Hideomi-san really _did_ kill himself.” He looks over at Chairman Nagato, who is slumped alone in his bed, looking so, so tired. “It wouldn’t have fixed anything if she died too,” he says quietly. “It wouldn’t have made anything better. So what’s the point of more deaths?”

“There you go,” Shinichi says, wishing he could ruffle the kid’s hair. “We’ll make a great detective of you yet.”

Conan practically _glows_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My buddy list got purged when the Nanowrimo website moved, so add me at Chuthulhu if you want. I'm a competitive bugger who is mainly gonna be writing Pokemon with less... actually never mind I write nuzlockes there's loads of character deaths there too


	9. Akemi II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conan is frozen in place, staring at the black Porsche

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey it's the point where I started developing a plot instead of just doing snapshots of Feels

Shinichi’s first thought on seeing the vintage car is _wow, Kaa-san would love that thing if it was hot rod red_.

Akemi, however, gasps like she’s just been shot again, and grabs at his arm. “That’s Gin’s car,” she says hurriedly. “That’s _Gin__’s_ car, that means Gin is _here_—”

Shinichi looks down at Conan. The boy is frozen in place, sheet-white, not hearing his friends discuss the old-looking car. “Conan, go home _now_ and stay there,” Shinichi says tersely.

“I…” Conan whispers, still frozen in place, staring at the car.

“Conan-kun? What’s wrong?” Ayumi asks, noticing that the smaller boy has fallen behind the rest of the group.

“Keep walking, I don’t see them nearby,” Akemi says, looking around. “Go on, Conan. We’ll keep an eye on this, okay?”

“Uh, yeah… sorry! I think I’m catching a bit of a cold…” Conan says, chasing after the kids, holding his head a little too stiffly to keep himself from looking back at the black Porsche. 

“Without him, we’re only going to be able to watch,” Shinichi sighs, “but, well… he’s six. And I know I bring him to a lot of murder scenes already, but…”

“…there are murderers,” Akemi agrees, “and then there’s _Gin_.”

And then there is Gin. 

Blood trickles down Shinichi’s face just _looking _at him.

“Does he… do this to you?” he manages to choke out over the feeling of _burning._ Akemi steps into his line of sight, enough to see that blood is spreading over her stomach and dripping from her mouth again.

“Oh god,” she whimpers. “Just being near him… it feels like I’m _dying_ again.”

“Yeah,” Shinichi coughs, gripping her arm and tugging her into the back of the car as Gin and Vodka get into the front. “But whatever they’re about to do, we have to _know_, if nothing else.”

“Do you think it’s like this for _everybody_ being near their murderer?” Akemi groans, wrapping her arms around her stomach and focusing as the car starts to move and the pair have to pay attention to moving with it before they phase out the back.

“Would explain why so many new murder victims look like…” Shinichi mutters, trailing off as Gin’s phone rings.

Haido Hotel. They’re going to kill somebody at Haido Hotel.

“Akemi-san, I’ll keep trailing them,” he mutters, clutching his head, “you… you need to tell Conan… to call…”

“You go, I’ll keep following,” Akemi insists. “I’ll be fine. I didn’t die of any head wounds, after all–I can probably pay attention better.” She smooths his hair out of his face with a smirk, but an affectionate one. Shinichi is struck by the thought that she was a loving big sister. Such gestures come so easily to her. “Go talk to Conan, then make sure he stays put and come to Haido Hotel.”

Shinichi nods, feeling better almost as soon as he’s out of the car, away from calm voices discussing murder and ghostly silver hair and frozen blue-green eyes…

_Right. Tell Conan to phone in an anonymous bomb threat, then go see what They do next._

All Shinichi can do is watch, perhaps, but at least he won’t watch Conan die like he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On editing and fixing this up I've developed a lot of feelings about this Akemi displacing a lot of big sisterly tendencies in Shinichi and Conan's direction, but it takes a while for Shinichi to click that she's treating him like a younger brother because he's a lifelong only child and doesn't actually know that Shiho was about his age when she died. I also got feelings about Shinichi being REAL protective of Conan out of reasons deeper than generalized protectiveness of children or a personal need for somebody to help him solve crimes, but again, absolutely hasn't realized it because for a genius this boy's emotional intelligence is looooooooooowwwwwwww. (For all that I don't really like Mouri Kogoro as a person or even as a character, I do like when the manga emphasizes that he actually has a big advantage over Shinichi in this area simply due to being an adult who's had various personal and profession adult friendships, a tumultuous marriage and a child under his belt. Shinichi's just gotta live more life and be around more people to develop that more nuanced understanding of relationships and motivations relating to them. Except in this AU, he can't, because he's forever sixteen and dead. Fun!)
> 
> I'm also starting to feel like I may do a followup to this that's more chronological, retelling the early manga on a case-by-case basis in this AU. This way is more dramatic for plot reveals but then something like that might allow me to dive into some situations in more detail and explore some characters more, particularly Conan, after I've gotten to the point where I explain exactly what his deal is. Would people be interested in reading something like that?


	10. Conan I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conan doesn't even have nightmares like normal kids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first part that's entirely original to this reposting rather than being a cleanup of something posted on tumblr before and it's just here to be sad and ominous

When Conan wakes from nightmares, he does so silently.

When he is asleep, he sometimes twitches, or whimpers, or whispers things that Shinichi can never wake out. But when he wakes, he goes still and evens his breathing before opening his eyes, and then stares silently upwards.

He does not scream, like a normal six-year-old with a nightmare. He does not cry out. He does cry, but silently, tears sliding down his cheeks while not a sound escapes his tightly-pressed lips. He does not wake up Mouri, or get up and go to Ran’s room to seek comfort. He lies still and silent.

He does not answer Shinichi asking if he’s alright, if he had a nightmare, if he wants to talk about it. In the morning, his cheer slides into place and he always tells Ran that he slept very well.

Shinichi has never gotten a word out of the boy on the subject of his nightmares, except for one: “Before.”

Shinichi can only infer that this means before he found the boy on the streets of Beika, before he took up the name Edogawa Conan and came to the Mouri Detective Agency. Before he was involved in a grisly murder at least twice a week, on average.

He’s not sure he wants to know about Before, but he knows that whatever it was, it should not have happened to a six-year-old.


	11. Akemi III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, that ghost will be easy to spot, at least.

Shinichi takes in the police cars, ambulances and press amassed outside of the Haido City Hotel with a sinking feeling. Akemi, at least, is easy to spot, being as she’s floating ten feet in the air above the crowd. “What happened?” he asks, rising to meet her.

“The assassination was carried out,” Akemi sighs, heading inside of the hotel. “The police got here fast, though, too fast for anybody to leave. Did Conan-kun call them?”

“Told him to call in an anonymous tip and then stay put at the Agency,” Shinichi says. “He probably will. He seemed pretty shaken up by seeing that car. Did you tell him Gin drives a black porsche?”

“No,” Akemi says, giving Shinichi an odd look. 

Shinichi racks his brains, trying to remember if he ever told Conan about Gin, but he can’t think why he _would_. After Akemi’s ghost arrived at the Mouri Agency, she and Shinichi trawled every Organization location she knew of, just in case. Every one was burned or sold, which according to Akemi, is unsurprising given that she betrayed them, and it was a betrayal that they’d expected to come sooner or later. Even in death, they couldn’t be sure that she wouldn’t leave intel for the police to discover. He’d squeezed her for all the details she knew, but she’d never progressed beyond intel-gathering before the Billion Yen Heist, and had never ranked an alcohol codename like her sister. She’d never known the level of information needed to get to the upper echelons of the Organization, but what she’d told him left him reeling at his own recklessness in stalking somebody like _Gin. _He’d been able to _see_ the murder in that man’s eyes, and thought that following _that _guy’s friend, without any backup, was a good idea?

He’s talked to Akemi for hours, but mostly at night, when Conan sleeps and the dead don’t need to. He can’t think of any time he would have spoken to Conan about Gin. Even _thinking_ about the circumstances of his own murder wracks his body with the memory of pain.

“Kudo-kun,” Akemi asks, “when I was dying, Conan-kun told me something. Do you remember?”

“I remember,” Shinichi says, relaxing a little at the sight of Megure-keibu interrogating a group of attendees of some kind of black tie party. He can’t quite have the faith in the police he once had, not after some of the things Akemi has told him, but he can have faith in Megure-keibu. “I couldn’t hear what he said, but he told me he told you his name. He seemed to think it would mean something to you, but he won’t tell me what. He clams up pretty damn hard when it comes to his past, and the last time I tried to push him about it he threatened to run away and leave me behind…” Shinichi shifts uncomfortably, distracting himself by taking in the mangled corpse under the chandelier. That guy’s ghost must be around here somewhere, and it’ll be hard to miss. “I… don’t like not knowing, but I need him too much to risk chasing him away. I hate being voiceless. And he _is_ just a kid. I don’t want to drive him back onto the streets…”

“I’m not surprised that he’s tight-lipped,” Akemi begins, before freezing and sucking in a sharp breath, eyes widening. “Pisco,” she says, pointing out an elderly man who is hovering around the fringes of the murder scene. “I recognize him! He knew my parents—He’s been a member of the Organization for more than fifty years!”

Well. That sure simplifies things. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think I've mentioned but one of the reasons I started thinking about this story was again was reading the truly phenomenal My Hero Academia fic [_Yesterday Upon The Stair_ ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8337607)by [Pitviperofdoom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PitViperOfDoom/pseuds/PitViperOfDoom) a few months ago, then rereading it like four times because holy shit it's so good, you guys. Obviously ghosts work very differently here than they do there but still if you know how to boku a hero and like ghost I really cannot recommend it highly enough. Anyway it got me thinkin about Conan seeing ghosts again and also gave me a few ideas that helped me extend the actual plot for this thing into existing, albeit in a somewhat esoteric way.


	12. Akemi IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From bad to worse.

It’s _agonizing_, knowing who killed the politician, which of the partygoers is an _assassin_ for _the Black Organization,_ and not being able to communicate that information _at all._

At the same time, he only _knows_ that information so quickly for the same reason that he can’t tell anybody. If he’d had a choice, would this be worth the tradeoff?

He wishes, _so much_, that he’d _had_ a choice.

“What’s he… oh, god,” Akemi gasps. Shinichi follows her line of sight to Masuyama Kenzo, and then his line of sight to…

“Conan!” Shinichi yells. The kid jumps, then ducks under a table, where he’s hidden by the tablecloth from anybody who can’t phase through the material. Shinichi immediately does so. “What the hell are you _doing _here?!” he snaps. He’s gripped by such cold fear that the boy shivers, his breath misting in the air. Shinichi struggles to get his emotions under control, but Pisco was looking _right at _Conan…

“I wanted to help you stop it,” Conan whispers. “Were we too late?”

“Too late to stop it, but because you called the police, they got here fast enough to stop the assassin from getting away quickly,” Shinichi assures him. “They haven’t figured him out yet, but you need to get out of here _now_.”

“Him?” Conan asks, with that sharp expression that makes him look so much older.

“The assassin’s a man by the name of Masuyama Kenzo, also known as Pisco,” Akemi explains as she joins them under the table, “and we saw him looking at you, Conan-kun. Do you know that name? Would he recognize you?”

Conan bites his lip. “Leaving. Okay. Is he still looking at me?”

Shinichi sticks his head back out of the table. “I don’t see him,” he says, looking around, “but the police are getting ready to get most of the guests out through the press. It’ll be a crush, but a crush nobody can see you in, so we can follow them out, okay?”

“Okay,” Conan says. He glances out from under the tablecloth, and, on getting the nod from Akemi, scurries over to join the horde starting to push through the reporters outside. 

“I don’t see Masuyama anywhere,” Shinichi says, looking around. “How could a guy that old disappear that _fast_?”

Akemi gives him a pitying look. “He’s an _assassin_ who’s made it to his seventies—and apparently, he’s still being deployed. That wouldn’t happen if he’s as much of a doddery old man as he appears to be. Don’t be foolish enough to fall for a cover like _that_ from a Black Organization member,” she adds pointedly, her hair briefly shifting into the childish pigtails that had played a part in her pretending to be a distressed high school girl. “I don’t like not being able to see him…”

“Speaking of not being able to see people, I _really_ hope Conan hits a growth spurt soon,” Shinichi says, diving into the crowd to find his small charge, feeling uneasy. Akemi is right. Pisco is one of _Them_, he’s already killed one person tonight, and maybe he was only looking at Conan because he was surprised to see such a young child at a black-tie-party-slash-murder-scene, but if Conan knew Gin’s car without Akemi telling him, if the things the boy won’t talk about are anything to do with _Them, _if Pisco might _recognize_ him…

He finds Conan just in time to see hands reaching for him, a cloth in one of them. “CONAN!” he yells. Conan turns…

…directly into the cloth. His eyes droop closed in moments, and hands scoop him up, cradling him on a shoulder as if his kidnapper is just a concerned relative carrying a sleeping child…

“CONAN!” Akemi screams, the pair of them powerless but to watch and follow as Pisco slips away with the boy unconscious in his arms.


	13. Toichi III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Family is a complicated thing.

The Disappearing Bunny is soon to disappear, his ghost watching with a grim smirk as his murderer is exposed. Escape King never made it here alive, and soon he’ll be gone too. And as it turns out, Red Herring never made it to the lodge at all, thanks to a little sabotage and replacement.

“You were awfully quick to agree with Yoshinori-san’s choice of favourite magician,” Shinichi comments. “Blowing your own horn a little, isn’t it?” 

“Doito Katsuki” doesn’t even pretend not to hear, grinning unrepentantly and nodding down at the trees below, where from their position, they can see Conan guiding the gathered magic lovers to the realization of how the trick was performed–and where the incriminating evidence will be. “Sure you shouldn’t be helping out your partner there?”

“He’s got this,” Shinichi says, shaking his head. “You _knew_ we were here. You can _see_ me. You could _easily _have warned us that False Child was a fake–”

“Despite what your parents may have told you, Tantei-kun, lying about your identity on the internet does not a murderer make,” Kid says mildly. “I never guessed that Fuden-san’s little granddaughter would be a killer until it was too late. I’m no detective, after all.”

“But _I am_,” Shinichi points out. “I know all about you, _otouto-san.__” _He spits the slightly contradictory term a little too sharply, frustrated at the dead man’s evasiveness. “You died three days before Kaitou Kid never turned up to his last heist, and by then your death onstage had already been written off as an accident. It was a _suspiciously_ quick ‘investigation’.”

“I let Them get a glimpse of my face so They’d think I survived somehow,” Kuroba Toichi says with a shrug, shifting back into the phantom thief. Even acknowledging that Shinichi knows his identity, he keeps his face in shadow, and when Shinichi hears the shouts of shock from below, he realizes that it’s because the thief is becoming visible, just for a moment, the last of the Magic-Lovers’ Chatroom to reveal his identity at the getaway. “Your curiosity got you killed, Ani. Isn’t that enough to make you let it go?”

“When better to investigate than now?” Shinichi counters. “They can only kill me once… and they already did _that_.”

“_He__’s_ still alive,” Toichi says, nodding down at Conan with sad eyes. “Looks just like my son did at that age,” he adds absentmindedly, as if forgetting that, for once, someone can hear him. 

“I understand your concern,” Shinichi says, _especially if you__’re projecting your son all over Conan–both of us, I guess, because if he used to look like Conan he’s also gotta look a hell of a lot like _me, “but worrying about Conan getting in danger is locking the stable after the horses have not only bolted, but already been shot and turned into glue.”

The emergency helicopter is finally approaching. Toichi lets the wind whip up his cape, then, from the sounds of the shouts of shock below, appears to living eyes to have vanished beneath it. “Some other time, Ani,” Toichi promises. “Don’t you have another little brother to look after right now?” 

Shinichi is already down amongst the shocked living before he remembers that, even as Conan collapses in a fever again, there isn’t anything he can do about it that all the warm, physical people around him couldn’t do better. 

Nothing except not send the kid out in the snow to solve murders for him in the first place.


	14. Akemi V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One murderer in this hotel was too many, and now there's even more.

Following Pisco is easy, as painful as it is to not be able to stop him as he slips out of the escaping crowd and down into a roped-off, disused wing of the hotel. He moves far swifter than anybody who’s talked to dithering old Chairman Kenzo at the party would expect, his back suddenly straighter, his eyes suddenly sharper. He’s able to hold up Conan just fine with one arm, his cane held under his arm, while digging in his pocket for keys. He opens the door to what looks like an old wine cellar, where he drops Conan roughly on the floor. 

“Conan!” Akemi calls, crouching down next to the unconscious boy. “There’s no need to throw him around like that!” she growls, even though the man can’t hear her. He might be able to feel her soon, though. Shinichi’s noticed the temperature drop whenever he’s in shock or horror, but now Akemi’s eyes blaze and the air around her warms.

Pisco slaps a hand to his pocket as his phone buzzes, not noticing the rising temperature. Shinichi leans close in to the old man’s shoulder to see the screen as he unlocks it and checks his messages. 

_One of the detectives found a loose purple handkerchief. With a burn mark on it. Ditch anything incriminating before they contact you._

_~Vermouth_

“Vermouth… there’s another one here called Vermouth,” Shinichi says.

Akemi’s mood changes so abruptly that condensation starts forming on . “Vermouth?” she says. “I’ve heard of them. Never met them… I think. I don’t even know for sure if they’re a man or a woman, but they’re supposed to be the greatest spy in the Organization… and the deadliest. Even more than _Gin_.”

Shinichi watches as Pisco lays his phone down on the table, checking a second phone in his pocket briefly, then sets down a pair of gloves next to it.

“I don’t see what he could have used to drop the chandelier, but he could’ve already handed that off to Vermouth,” Akemi says, watching Pisco leave. He locks the door with a click behind himself. “Follow him, Kudo-kun. I’ll keep trying to wake Conan-kun and find a way out of here.”

“I’ll let you know if I spot Vermouth,” Shinichi promises, “or Gin and Vodka.” He gives Conan a last worried look before heading through the wall after Pisco.

Pisco is halfway down the hall when his other phone rings. “Hello?” he answers, his voice wavery in a way that doesn’t remotely match the sharp expression on his face. “Ahhh, officer… may I ask why? …Well, if you insist, officer, of course I’m happy to assist in any way that I can. As it happens, I’m still in the hotel… oh, just the restroom, officer, a common problem at my age, you know… of course. I’ll be right there.” He hangs up the phone, pockets it, and sets his cane back down. His back hunches, his expression softens, his stride slows, and he leans heavily on his cane as he makes his way back into the lobby to meet the police officer waiting for him there. 

All the way along, Shinichi had been musing on the burned purple handkerchief. _What would burn it? A cigarette lighter, maybe, or a cigarette__… that could work, to create a fuse for a trap that would drop the chandelier at a specified time… but they didn’t find anything unusual in the wreckage. What did he have gloves for? And what about them would be suspicious enough to ditch them?_

The police have commandeered a conference room on the fourth floor. Several of the party attendees are waiting outside, some sitting in chairs, others staring out of the window. Shinichi recognizes a mystery novelist, an actress, a music producer, and several other notable faces. _Aren__’t they all too high-profile to be in the Organization? Then again, if they know something about disguise…_

Pisco nods to the group waiting outside of the conference room as he approaches. Chris Vineyard smooths her skirt as she stands up. “**Here you are, sir,****” **she says in English, gesturing to her seat to indicating that she’s offering it to the elderly man before her interpreter can say anything.

“Hmmm, and here I always thought Americans had no manners… thank you, miss,” he says, nodding to her as he sits down. She leans back against the window next to him, folding her arms as the polite smile fades back into a bored expression.

When one human looks at another, they instinctively follow the other person’s eyeline. The same holds true of the dead. Shinichi follows the actress’ gaze out of the window, then finds himself staring in the kind of horror that has the window misting up.

There’s a car out there.

There’s a _black porsche_ out there.

Gin and Vodka are standing outside of it, visible from all the way up on the fourth floor.

And Chris Vineyard is looking directly at them, her eyes not vague but focused, narrowing almost imperceptibly as the two murderers outside start walking into the Haido City Hotel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops I forgot to post yesterday... so aaayyyy double-post time today!


	15. Yukiko I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new social worker for Conan is unexpected, and concerning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally I posted all the Haido Hotel scenes sequentially, but this story's already non-chronological and honestly I like breaking the scenes up with other scenes that feel relevant. Is it too disruptive?

Shinichi is guiding Conan through some times tables—not that the kid needs much help, Shinichi’s been setting him extra challenges after his finishes his too-easy first grade homework—when Ran walks up from the office and announces that a new social worker is here to see him.

“Yeah, I’m suspicious too,” Shinichi says, following Conan down the stairs while the kid schools his expression into one of careful shyness. There’d been a few social workers when Conan first cropped up, but it’s an open secret that Japan’s social work system is horrifically understaffed and overworked. The fact that nobody can get a goddamn word out of Conan on the issue of potential family and the fact that neither paperwork nor a matching missings person case exists anywhere for the kid is clearly bothering them, but the social worker who interviewed Conan before decided that it’s better to leave the kid in a home where he seems comfortable, where he has a stable source of affection in Ran, and which apparently, somehow, meets the financial requirements, rather than cramming him into an already-overstuffed children’s home. Ran’s success in hiding or destroying all of her father’s beer, cigarettes and racing tickets keeps any major red flags from bothering the social worker, who Shinichi has overheard telling Ran that she feels it best to adopt a “wait and see” approach to finding out anything about Conan.

That suddenly there is a new social worker to spare for the case is inherently suspicious, as is the fact that she’s arrived alone instead of being introduced or at least announced by the previous case worker. The plump, kindly-faced middle-aged woman who greets them doesn’t immediately set off any warning signals, which Shinichi is paranoid enough to see as a warning signal in and of itself. Asking to speak to Conan alone isn’t necessarily an odd move for a social worker, since they usually want to interview children in a context where the adults around them can’t influence their responses, but Shinichi is already on edge enough to…

…do nothing. Whoever this woman is, whatever she is going to do, all Shinichi can do is watch and hope he can warn Conan of any concealed weapons in time for the kid to scream loud enough for Ran to hear him upstairs. 

“You can call me Fumiyo,” the woman says, smiling at Conan, who resolutely avoids eye contact or in any way acknowledging that she’s speaking to him. One advantage the kid has in being six is that this is a completely legitimate way for him to avoid talking to people he doesn’t want to talk to. Kids who are traumatized or afraid or just _that_ shy can just _not talk_ and that is just fine for most people, if sometimes exasperating. Most are sympathetic. Conan clamming right up into his _I__’m small and shy and scared_ mode has kept him out of the papers for all the murders he’s helped solve so far, after all. “I’m just trying to get familiar with your case, Conan-kun. So, you came home with Ran-san after meeting her here in Beika, right?”

Conan doesn’t look up or speak. 

“You met her in a house belonging to the Kudo family, I understand,” Fumiyo says, checking some paperwork. “What were you doing there, Conan?”

“Be ready to run and scream,” Shinichi advises. “Those aren’t your case notes, they look like printouts of some kind of murder mystery story. She’s just looking at them for effect.” Conan doesn’t look up or speak, but continues staring at where he’s dragging his fingers in random circles on his knee, briefly tracing out _hai._ He tenses when Fumiyo gets up and kneels down next to Conan’s chair.

“You see, Conan, the same day Ran met you, the boy living in that house went missing,” she says quietly. “We’re hoping you might know a little something about that. Won’t you tell me?”

“_We_ who?” Shinichi snaps. “Yell and run!”

Conan jumps for the coffee table, taking a deep breath to scream for Ran, but Fumiyo moves astonishingly quickly for such a rotund woman, yanking him back and putting a hand over his mouth.

“I’m not going to hurt you!” she says quickly, her voice suddenly sounding different. “Please, I just want to know if you saw–”

Conan responds to the sudden grab with a kick to the stomach that’s oddly ineffective, then using his still-free hands to claw not at Fumiyo’s hands but at her face, going for the eyes to try and prompt Fumiyo to drop him to protect herself. He freezes when a strip of her plump cheek peels bloodlessly away from her face, revealing a completely different cheek underneath. 

“Oh!” Fumiyo gasps, slapping a hand up to her cheek. Conan is free, but he doesn’t run or scream, just staring at the woman with pale terror.

“Please,” the boy whispers, “don’t kill Ran-neechan or Ojisan. I-I didn’t tell them anything…”

“What? No, no, I’m not here to kill anybody!” Fumiyo says frantically. This time, Shinichi recognizes her voice–and the writing style of the murder mystery prose she was using as fake paperwork. And who would bring random printouts of her husband’s novels to use as fake paperwork for effect.

“She’s not,” Shinichi says, keeping close behind her so Conan will keep looking in the right direction. “She’s my mother.”

“You’re… _Shinichi-niichan__’s_ mother…?” Conan says, staring in confusion at “Fumiyo”. 

“Yes, I am,” she says, pulling aside the remains of the mask, though she leaves the black wig in place. “You’ve met Shinichi? I need to know, Conan. He’s still missing, and even Yuusaku can’t find him. When did you meet Shinichi? Did you meet him the day you met Ran-chan?”

He’s missing.

Shinichi hadn’t left a corpse. He’d left clothes, stained with blood and grease from when his goddamn body _evaporated_ while he was still living in it, clothes that had been blown away by the winds preceding that evening’s rainstorm. The storm had probably served to destroy any remaining DNA evidence. His jacket, due to the weight of his wallet, had been found, but not most of the rest. Kudo Shinichi lost his jacket, and then, when he failed to answer any calls for the rest of the day, didn’t show up to school the next day, and somebody noticed some dark spots on the jacket’s collar, Kudo Shinichi became officially Missing. 

He’d known that much. He’s seen Ran giving statements to Megure-keibu. Somehow, he’d never even considered that his parents would know. Obviously, Megure-keibu or somebody would have to call them to see if they’d heard from Shinichi, but it’s so rare that they’re even around anyway that he hasn’t given them a second thought. 

And what is he supposed to tell them now, through Conan? What would they believe? 

Not _this_. His father could probably be led to uncovering Shinichi’s murder, but there is no way he’ll listen to a _ghost_.

“Don’t tell her I’m here,” he says quickly. Conan is staring at Yukiko, clearly completely unable to figure out what to do. “Tell her… tell her you… god _dammit_.” He runs his hands through his hair. “No. You didn’t see me. You… you got into the house the way we got in. Remember? You hid in the house. It was empty. They’ll know it shouldn’t have been empty. That’s where Ran found you.”

“I didn’t see him,” Conan whispers shakily. “It was raining. I wanted to get somewhere dry. There was a big hole in the wall of the house next door so I went into that garden ‘cause there were all the bushes I could hide under, but then I found a tunnel, an’ it went into the garden, and the house was all empty, so, so I…”

“He wasn’t there? You didn’t see him that day?” Yukiko says, slumping. “Then Ran-chan _was_ the last one to see him…” She gently smooths Conan’s hair. “I’m sorry I scared you, Conan-kun. I just want to find my son, very much. I’m sure your mother wants to find you, too. Why were you out there all alone?” She tilts her head with a playful little smirk that always, in Shinichi’s experience, means _trouble. __“_What’s your real name? Come on, _Edogawa Conan_? Were you in the library when you made that up?”

Conan backs away, shaking his head. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I didn’t see Shinichi-niichan. Where I was before doesn’t have anything to do with him. Please don’t ask. Please let me stay safe here.”

“Okay,” Yukiko says softly. “But if you see anything, please…” She takes one of the papers out of her bag, tears off a blank strip from the top of one page and scribbles a phone number on it. “If you hear from Shinichi, please call us, okay? And if you want help with… whatever it is you’re so scared of…” She smooths Conan’s hair again. “…Well, my husband’s got a lot of contacts in Interpol. We could help you, get you further away if you want. You just have to ask, okay?”

“Okay,” Conan says, tucking the slip into his pocket. “Sorry about your face…”

Yukiko tucks the remains of the mask and all of her fake paperwork into her bag. “I’ll just slip out now,” she says with a wink. “I asked Ran-chan and Kogoro-kun to stay upstairs until further notice, for privacy reasons. You go up and tell them to come out after I’m gone, okay?”

“Okay,” Conan says with a nod. 

Yukiko smiles. “You’re a smart boy, Conan-kun,” she says. “A lot like Shinichi was at your age. Don’t lose that phone number!” She straightens her jacket, fixing the padding underneath that Conan kicked, peers carefully out of the door to make sure that neither Ran nor Kogoro is peeping down the stairs, and leaves swiftly and quietly.

Conan sits down, breathing shakily. “You’re okay,” Shinichi promises him. “You did great. Slow, deep breaths.”

“She doesn’t believe in ghosts?” Conan asks, wrapping his arms around his knees and starting to breathe slowly.

“She… maybe would, but Tou-san wouldn’t buy it, and they’d just fight about it,” Shinichi says, shaking his head. “Hey, Conan? You froze up when you saw she was wearing a mask, then asked her not to kill Ran and Otchan. Who… who did you think she was?”

“I… I thought…” Conan looks up, then down and away. “But she wasn’t. So it’s fine. I don’t wanna talk about it.”

The worst thing about Conan being six is that if he doesn’t want to talk, he can just clam up, and there’s nothing Shinichi can do about it.


	16. Akemi VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are already two dead people in this cellar. There don't need to be three.

“Gin and Vodka are coming _now_!” Shinichi shouts urgently, letting himself drop like a stone through the floors down to the wine cellar. Thankfully, Conan is now conscious, though kneeling on the floor with his arms wrapped around himself and Akemi crouched over him. She looks up with a startled expression. “Akemi-san, did you find a way out? We have to go _now_!”

“I… no, we haven’t found a way out yet,” Akemi says, shaking her head as if disoriented. “We… never mind. Later. This isn’t a true wine cellar, it’s not fully sealed, but the air vents are too small, even for Conan-kun. The door’s too strong to break down, not with a child’s strength.”

“There’s the chimney,” Conan says, scrambling to his feet and peering up the empty fireplace.

“That’s way too wide for you to climb,” Shinichi comments, floating up and down the height of the chimney, “but it’s clear. If there was a way to…”

“It’s kinda crumbly, so maybe…” Conan mumbles, feeling at the brickwork with his fingers until he finds something he can grip onto, then kicking his toes into the crumbling mortar as high as he can reach with his toes to create toeholds.

“Conan, be _careful_, Shinichi hisses, his heart in his throat as he watches the kid slowly start scaling the chimney. “Just get up out of sight, you don’t have to go any higher…”

“Gin killed both of you,” Conan grunts. “I wanna get _far_ away from him and outta this hotel…” 

“Which is fair, but–Conan!” Shinichi cries as one of the boy’s feet slips, though thankfully he recovers. “You are gonna kill me _again_ with this stunt…”

“I hate this,” Akemi mutters, hovering close to Conan with her hands out, clearly aching to be able to physically support him. “I hate every single thing about this. I hate this _so much__…”_

_If only I could remember how the hell I managed to go physical before__… _Shinichi frantically wracks his memory for what happened at the diplomat’s home, but he can’t remember anything but desperation. He’s feeling _plenty_ of that now, but still his hands pass through Conan’s back—

Pain is building in his head, and when he looks at Akemi, he can see blood spreading and dripping from her abdomen. She looks back at him with a horrified expression that tells him blood must be dripping from his face. “They’re here,” he realizes as the pain builds. “They must be close, in the hallway—Conan, _please_ just hang on where you are, they won’t be able to see you–”

There’s a _crash_ from door, and with a gasp, Conan slips. 

“NO!” Akemi yells, reaching out and–

Grabbing him. Her back slams against the wall, the sharp edges of her heels dragging against the opposite side until they catch.

Just inches above the mantle, out of sight, Miyano Akemi holds herself in place, trembling in shock, Conan clutched tight in her arms as Gin and Vodka walk through the door they just broke down.

The pain in Shinichi’s head is almost blinding, but he feels like he could sing with relief.


	17. Shinichi I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shinichi tries not to brood too much about being dead.

Shinichi tries not to brood too much about being dead.

Really, he does. Working with Conan, he can still do his detective work very effectively—even _more_ effectively, perhaps, now that he can talk to other ghosts and move unseen and unheard, even if he then has to rely on a six-year-old to lead the adults around him to Shinichi’s conclusions—and if he can get the hang of going fully corporeal more often, he’ll be able to talk to Ran and his parents again, just for a while. Until he’s ready for them to know.

In the meantime, he’s hardly _lonely_. Akemi’s pretty much always around, and there’s quite a network of other victims of the Organization who pop in for a chat every now and again, and of course he’s always around Conan, who is himself a fascinating little enigma. But there’s a line between watching over somebody and stalking them, so Shinichi tries to give the kid some space when he’s at school. Let him have a normal day, playing with the three incredibly normal kids he’s friends with, and do his own math problems like everybody else.

Sometimes Shinichi goes and spends time getting to know other ghosts. Well, okay, grilling them for information on their killers, but they’re generally happy to give it. Or he’ll hang out, unseen, in Professor Agasa’s lab, watching the Professor tinker with whatever new gadget he’s got in the works now. The lab feels as comfortable as his own home, and watching the Professor absentmindedly potter about feels so _normal_ that it’s almost like he never died.

Today, though, Shinichi’s at _his_ school. Teitan High.

He’s watching his classmates prepare for the Culture Festival, designing costumes and painting sets and practicing lines, when it really starts hitting him that he will never be a part of this or any other Culture Festival ever again. He will never compete in another Sports Festival, or go on a school trip. He will never change his mind and join the football team after all, or the debate team, or the literature club. He will never go to a cafe after school with Ran again, or find a love letter in his shoe cubby, or hear a love confession, or give one. He will never graduate from high school or take university entrance exams. He will never have his first kiss.

His desk sits empty, but there is no flower on it, because nobody even knows that he’s dead. Instead there are pieces of a costume, shoved out of the way while a cape is being sewed together on the next desk over.

He was only sixteen. He will never be seventeen.


	18. Akemi VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solving this murder--on a technicality, no less--has only raised more questions than it answers.

Desperation. Or maybe it was _frustration._ Shinichi can’t say for certain, now, what it was that he’d felt at that moment in the murdered diplomat’s mansion that had pushed him back into the physical realm, however briefly. He can’t say what he’d been feeling then that he _hasn__’t_ felt at other times. 

Whatever it is, he hopes Akemi keeps feeling it long enough to hold herself up, braced in the crumbling chimney by the blades of her shoulders and shoes, Conan clutched to her stomach with his hands clasped over his mouth to stifle any frightened noise before Gin or Vodka can hear it.

“What the hell’s got him so caught up?” Vodka grumbles, poking around the boxes of bottles. 

“He said he’d left something here for us,” Gin says, picking up the phone that Pisco left behind. “Even he can’t be arrogant enough to expect us come all the way out here just to dispose of his evidence…”

“Oh, shit,” Shinichi mutters, watching Gin approach the fireplace, but his head is spinning too much to think of what to do. His head is _agonizing_ and blood is dripping in his _eyes _and his guts are _burning__…_

“Come on,” Gin sasa, turning and striding out of the room. “There’s one more place we can look.” Vodka hurries to follow, slamming the door behind him. Shinichi doesn’t need to breathe but he gasps anyway as his vision clears and the pain starts to ebb away.

“They’re both gone, and they broke out the lock,” he gasps out as thoughts other than _pain_ start moving in his head again. “We can get out that way…”

“With Gin, Vodka and Pisco all crawling around the hotel? No thanks,” Akemi pants, starting to climb. “There’ll be fire escapes from the roof.”

“Shinichi-niichan, can you follow them?” Conan whispers, clinging tight to Akemi as she pulls them both up the chimney shaft. “Gin and Vodka. Where are they going?”

Shinichi _really_ doesn’t want to be anywhere near Gin, but he reminds himself that the pain isn’t real, it’s just a memory. _Conan_ is real, and alive, and may not remain so if Gin catches him unawares. “I’ll find out,” Shinichi promises, following after the two distinctive assassins as fast as he can, letting the feeling of burning pain guide him more than any logical analysis of the hotel’s layout. He hopes, more than anything, that they aren’t going to the roof.

They go onto the roof.

“Akemi-san! Conan!” he yelled into the chimney shaft. “Go back down! THEY’RE ON THE ROOF!”

He doesn’t see what the reaction is, exactly, trying to watch Gin and Vodka through the blood in his eyes, but he hears the frightened gasp in the chimney followed by the briefest cry.

It’s not the cry of a ghost, because Gin hears it, and his victorious smirk _blinds_ Shinichi with burning pain. He all but collapses into the chimney shaft, falling not towards gravity but away from the _pain_.

Akemi lies in a crumpled heap at the bottom, Conan still clutched to her stomach. As he watches, Akemi’s body evaporates, gone even to ghost eyes, leaving Conan lying on the ground, alone and shivering.

“That’s what happened when you vanished,” the child whispers. “I think she’s still here, just, she’s weak is all…”

“Is she, now? How fascinating.”

“Oh, come _on_,” Shinichi groans as Conan looks up into the barrel of Pisco’s gun.

“Seems like there’s more to you than I thought, boy,” Pisco says, rolling a lit cigar in his mouth as he talks. “Eh, Vermouth?”

“More than you can imagine, Pisco,” Chris Vineyard says, shooting the old man in the head. 

“What the–what the _hell_ are you doing?!” Pisco yells as his body drops to the floor. 

“Is he there?” Vineyard–_Vermouth_–asks, looking at Conan. The boy nods, staring at the woman speechlessly. “Well, if you’re wondering why, it came from the top, Pisco. You’ve been getting too desperate. I can’t blame you, at your age. Promises were made and you’ve been waiting a long, long time for them to be kept. You expected too much good faith from bad people.” She narrows her eyes on Conan. “And you saw things you shouldn’t have.”

“She _knows_ about you,” Shinichi realizes. “Can she _see_–?”

“No, she can’t,” Conan whispers. “What.. are you going to do to me?”

Vermouth regards him thoughtfully. “Get behind that shelf,” she orders after a moment, gesturing with her gun. “_Now_, little shot.”

“What the hell are you talking about?!” Pisco yells angrily, getting right into Vermouth’s face. The side of his head is a ghastly mess from the exit wound. 

“She can’t hear you, and I wish I couldn’t either,” Shinichi says darkly, raising a hand as blood begins dripping down his face again. “Shit, Gin’s coming! Conan, do it! Get behind the shelf!”

Conan nods, running behind the shelf and out of sight mere seconds ahead of Gin climbing out of the chimney. “Vermouth,” he says curtly, looking from the woman who is calmly lighting a cigarette to the body on the floor. “I see. He said he found something interesting here. What was it?”

“Who knows? I shot first,” Vermouth says with a shrug, opening something on her phone. “This photograph of a couple of the celebs at the party snuggling in the dark and the article about it have gone viral. It won’t be long until the police notice him in it, raising his gun.” She kneels down, wiping her gun down with a handkerchief and putting it in Pisco’s corpse’s hand. She puts Pisco’s own gun inside her jacket.“I shot him at short range and in the temple. Leave him here as a suicide and we’re safe.”

“Better burn the place to be sure,” Gin says, knocking down one of the boxes of vodka. The bottles smash high-proof alcohol all across the floor, some of it pooling close to Pisco’s still-burning cigar. “Weren’t you being interrogated?”

“They were looking for somebody who’d lost a purple handkerchief, and I slipped him mine after my interview,” Vermouth says with a shrug, plucking Pisco’s cigar from his lips. “We’re free to go. I pretended to call my car. Give a girl a ride?” She smiles flirtatiously at Gin as she holds out the cigar. 

“They’re goddamn _suiciding _me,” Pisco laughs hollowly. “After all I did for those self-serving, traitorous–”

“I’m sorry, who did you think you were working for?” Shinichi growls through the burning pain that seems to eat into him more and more every second that he’s near Gin. 

“Drop that and move,” Gin says, brushing past Vermouth. “No more wasting time.”

“You’re no fun,” Vermouth pouts, dropping the cigar into the vodka, which goes up in a flash. She saunters out after Gin without looking back.

“Conan, let’s _go_,” Shinichi hisses, sticking his head out of the doorway. “They’re already gone, they want out of here before anybody notices the fire!”

“You should follow them,” Conan says quietly, peering anxiously out of the door. Shinichi looks back at Pisco, who is scowling down at his body. 

“No,” Shinichi decides, taking a deep breath as the burning fades. “I’m going to take you home. After all that, I’m _not_ making you go home alone.”

Conan reaches up as if to hold his hand, then sighs and nods as he follows Shinichi down the hall. He still looks shaken, but also happy that Shinichi isn’t leaving him alone. Shinichi has no intention of letting Conan be alone for quite a while.

_As soon as you stop looking so damn terrified, I want to know what the _hell_ happened in there__…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, strange, mysterious original plot


	19. Toichi IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shinichi needs to learn how to repeat a trick.

“They nearly got Conan yesterday,” Shinichi explains morosely, “and I couldn’t do a goddamn thing.”

“Hence you no longer pretending to politely not know where my home is,” Toichi comments. He is sitting halfway through a chair, clearly not fully physical, yet he is continually picking up and juggling coins, cards and beanbags that are strewn across one of the workbenches in the cramped chaos of the hidden room Shinichi found by floating through walls in the Kuroba house. “Here for advice, Ani?”

“I need you to teach me to do that,” Shinichi says bluntly, pointing to the coin that Toichi is spinning in his fingers. “I can always ask Conan to move things for me, but a fat lot of good _that_ was when he was drugged unconscious…”

“What exactly happened?” Toichi asks, pausing with the coin poised between his ring and middle fingers. His expression has slid into a recognizably neutral facade that Shinichi’s seen before—it slams down like a shutter as soon as the man realizes he’s at risk of being caught in the throes of a genuine emotion. It’s also another sign of the truly astonishing control the man has over his appearance. Most ghosts can’t help wearing their hearts on their sleeves.

“An Organization agent called Pisco recognized and tried to kidnap Conan,” Shinichi growls, clutching his head. He’d barely been able to _see_ when Gin was near, but Akemi had climbed the whole damn _chimney_ with Conan in her arms. “Miyano Akemi got desperate enough to be able to _carry_ him, but I couldn’t do a damn thing!”

“I think… this is only my guess,” Toichi says slowly, starting to move the coin again. “You did something out of desperation, whatever the equivalent of adrenaline is for us given that we no longer actually have adrenal glands. You tore a muscle doing it, and that muscle does not function well anymore because of the damage you did to it. You need therapy to recover its function. You need practice.” He holds out the coin. “Not your whole body. You only need the tips of your fingers for this. Just focus on the tips of your finger and thumb.”

“Focus and… do what?” Shinichi asks, reaching hopefully.

“Want it,” Toichi says simply. “_Want_ it. The first time I did anything… Kaito was sick, and Chikage had left him home alone again. He must have been about nine. He was coughing so much, and he had a bottle of water, but it was _just_ out of his reach. In that moment, I wanted to be able to move that bottle a few inches more than anything I’d ever wanted in my _life._ Nudging a bottle a few inches is rather less than what _you_ did before, I understand, which is possibly why I didn’t do damage to myself when I managed it. It was hard, but once you know the feeling, it’s easier to repeat.”

“It gets easier the more you build the muscle,” Shinichi says, thinking of Conan crouched on the floor of the fireplace, staring down the barrel of Pisco’s gun…

“Well done!” Toichi says brightly as Shinichi manages to nudge the coin, though his fingers go through it after a moment. He puts the coin down on the table. “Keep practising that. Do _not_ push yourself, no matter how desperate you are.”

“So what does your son think of there being a poltergeist in his house now?” Shinichi asks, reaching for the coin again. “Do you appear to–?”

“_No_,” Toichi says emphatically. “You can imagine how much I _wished_ I could after I died, watching Kaito and Chikage grieve, but…” He looks aside, to the wall adjoining what is now his son’s TV room. “By the time I could manage it for any length of time, it had been a few years since my death. They were both… recovering. I _saw_ what my death did to them. How could I make them suffer that a second time, when I finally do go?”

Shinichi drops his hand. It’s that or drop the conversation. “They have no idea who the Kaitou Kid is?” he asks in surprise.

“Well, Chikage knew who I was… I wonder who she thinks the Kid is now,” Toichi sighs, picking up some beanbags to juggle with a distant, blank expression. “She’s never here. Possibly she thinks Kaito finally found this room. I doubt she noticed when I messed with the door springs. I set up some dead man’s switches so that if anything happened to me, Kaito could get the full story, in my voice, when he was ready for it… I hadn’t anticipated that I would not only still be here, but capable of avenging my _own_ death, thank you very much. I’d rather he didn’t have anything to do with it.” A fond smile finally breaks the unsettling blankness. “I’ve seen him on a few heists, helping Nakamori-keibu. I do my best to not interact with him without being obvious about it. He’s smart–the last thing I want is for him to recognize me. I only want him to lose me once.”

His facade is slipping, as it does when it comes to his son, and Shinichi turns his attention back to the coin. He doesn’t want to see the expression on Toichi’s face anymore, or think about Ran’s when she cries for him, time and time again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think the original version of this on tumblr had dialogue referring to the spelunking case where Conan go shot, but it worked better to attach this conversation to what happened in Haido Hotel.


	20. Tomoaki I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From worse to worse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things been bad here healthwise and I've been in and out of hospital so I'm gonna get up the last three chapters over the course of today. We're in all new material here folks! Enjoy! (why am i saying that there is no joy here)

Shinichi is shadowing Ran and Sonoko around school, just to hear them chatter to each other, when they encounter Doctor Araide.

Shinichi hasn’t seen the man since his father was murdered. He remembers hearing some of his (former) classmates talking about a local doctor covering the school nurse’s sick leave, and some of Ran and Sonoko’s friends giggling about it being an attractive young man, but hadn’t realized it was Araide. He’s perfectly courteous and friendly as ever as he chats to Ran and Sonoko, asks after Mouri and Conan and Sonoko’s family, and Shinichi shoves back the surge of jealousy—_It was just about knitting, Ran__’s not interested in him, even if she was it’s none of your business, she’s not _yours _and she never will be__—_

Something is off. At the far end of the corridor is another Doctor Araide.

Shinichi moves closer, wondering if he’s mistaking a similar-looking substitute teacher for the doctor, but no, that _is_ Araide. And Shinichi gets close just in time to see clearly as an upperclassman walks right _through_ this one.

“Dr Araide?” he calls, perhaps louder than he needs to, but he has to check. The one talking to Ran and Sonoko doesn’t look up, but the one keeping his distance does, jaw dropping in shock when he sees Shinichi. “I’m Kudo Shinichi. You _are_ Dr Araide Tomoaki, right? I saw you at your father’s murder, but you wouldn’t have seen me.”

“You’re… Kudo Shinichi?” the ghost Araide says, looking past him to Ran and Sonoko. “I… heard you were missing,” he says quietly. “Do they know…?”

“That I’m dead? Not yet.” Shinichi looks from the Araide talking to Ran and Sonoko to the one before him. “How come there’s one of you still walking around if you’re dead?”

“They—she’s _not me_,” Araide blurts out, which, yes, is obvious, but he’s clearly been dy—desperate to tell somebody. “She’s not me! They came at night, grabbed us out of our beds, they set off the security system and—and they said they’d kill Hikaru if I didn’t tell them the password, to call the security company, I told them but I thought it wouldn’t matter because the company would know something was wrong if _I _didn’t give the password and send help, but she—she used my _voice_, imitated it perfectly and called the company, told them it was a false alarm, set off by my senile grandmother, _laughed_ about it with whoever she was talking to, a-and then…” He covers his face with his hands. “Then they killed us anyway,” he moans.

The false Araide finishes up his—her?—conversation with Ran and Sonoko and starts walking down the hallway. As the fake gets close, the ghost of Araide flinches, dropping his hands, and now Shinichi can see a neat bullet hole in his temple. The exit wound is probably horrifying, but it’s still a swift, pretty painless way to go if the shooter’s aim is good.

Okay, Shinichi’s envious. He died alone and screaming in agony. He’s allowed to be envious of others’ better deaths.

“That’s a woman?” Shinichi asks, pointing at the impostor as they walk away, oblivious to the damage their mere presence did to the real Araide. He nods, wincing and clutching at his head. “She can copy your voice, and she’s copied your face too?” _Even adjusted her build to look like a man. Haven__’t I seen that recently?_

Araide nods. The blood and wounds are receding but he looks like he’s going to cry. “I think she did something to the nurse here,” he says wretchedly. “She was talking about following a lead here, and the very next day…”

“Probably,” Shinichi mutters, heart in his mouth as he looks at Ran and Sonoko, standing where the fake doctor left them, Ran good-naturedly humouring Sonoko’s overdramatic swooning over the presence of a handsome young doctor in their school. _They were _inches_ from a murderer and __**I didn**__**’t know**__! _“I’m going to follow your impostor and gather information,” he tells the real Araide, “but you don’t have to. Being near your murderer _hurts_, I get it. But, well…” He sighs, then nods to Ran. “If you need somewhere to go… follow Ran. Conan… the kid can see us. As far as I’ve found, he’s the only living person who can.”

“Conan-kun can… oh!” Araide gasps. “Thank goodness. _That__’s_ why he was always staring at nothing. Here I was getting worried and telling Mouri-san to get his prescription checked!”

He must have told Kogoro, who characteristically did nothing about it, and for once in his life Shinichi’s grateful for the man’s laissez-faire parenting. Ran would have hauled Conan to an optometrist immediately, and that just would’ve been awkward for everyone.

“But I’d better follow her home with you,” Araide continues as they start after the impostor at a safe distance. “It’s my grandmother. She… doesn’t quite seem to understand that she’s dead.” He rubs the back of his neck, looking terribly sad and lost. “I suppose this isn’t what she understands as the afterlife. So she’s just… flitting about the house, yelling at the impostor to leave, then yelling at the impostor for ignoring her. She berates poor Hikaru for not bringing her tea, even though Hikaru’s explained over and over that she can’t pick up anything in the kitchen…” He sighs sadly. “She just wanders around the house in cycles, doing the same thing over and over. I’ve tried to explain what happened and sometimes it seems like she remembers and understands, but then she’s forgotten a couple of hours later… I don’t know what to do.”

“Let her turn into a poltergeist and screw up your impostor’s day?” Shinichi suggest.

Araide’s face, somehow, falls even further. “She could turn into a…?” he asks anxiously.

“She’s not going to transform into anything,” Shinichi says quickly, “but she might stay stuck until whoever killed all of you is dead or arrested.” He feels bad for teasing the guy. Shinichi got jealous of Ran paying attention to the guy, sure, but there’s no reason she wouldn’t be. The doctor was always kind and gentle and compassionate, and now he’s dead and _still_ trying to look after his grandmother. And now he’s here, shadowing his murderer instead of looking after his grandmother, meaning he’s probably concerned about what the impostor’s doing with his face, even though being anywhere near her causes him incredible pain. He’s too damn _nice_ for this.

“Is there anything we can do?” Araide asks. “It isn’t just that she killed us, and I think she’s killed other people, too… Kudo-kun, she’s looking for Conan-kun. I saw his picture on her computer.”

Ah. So _that__’s_ how it gets worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'know what's great about having a protagonist who can see ghosts? You can make ALL the fake deaths legit and still keep the characters


	21. Akemi VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Akemi returns. She has a theory.

The hour is late when Akemi finally reappears, and Shinichi could not be more relieved to see her.

He was sitting on the roof of the agency, looking up at the sky. There’s no seeing stars in Tokyo, not with all the light pollution, but that only matters to living eyes. Dead eyes are… strange. He _knows_ there are stars up there, so that’s the light that he sees. He doesn’t have cones or rods or receptors. He sees what he thinks he should see.

It’d be fascinating to experiment with if he wasn’t too dead to write anything down. He was practicing picking up and moving a coin, the way Toichi showed him, but drops it when he sees Akemi in the street below, finding her way back to the Agency.

“Conan’s okay,” he reassures her, flying to her side. “Pisco cornered him, then Vermouth killed Pisco, then she… talked to his ghost? She seemed to know that ghosts exist and Conan can see them. Then she told Conan to hide, lied to Gin and Vodka, and left with them.” He runs his hands through his hair. “Conan has clammed up completely. I can’t get a damn word out of the kid. Do _you_ know what the hell _any_ of that was about?!”

Akemi bites her lip, twisting her hands in her skirt. “I’m not certain,” she says quietly. “I couldn’t get him to confirm or deny. But my theory is, well…” She looks to the side. “You remember I told you about my sister. Shiho.”

Shinichi nods. “A scientist for the Organization, right?”

“She was very young when our parents died,” Akemi explains, “but she was already _brilliant_. She drew chemical formulas the way other kids draw Doraemon. Organization members took custody of us, and I got a normal-ish childhood, but Shiho… they funneled her through programs for gifted children and then into work as soon as she had her Master’s in chemical engineering. We didn’t see each other, just exchanged letters, for nearly ten years. When she got highly-ranked enough she was able to arrange for us to see each other, and then she told me there were others like her. Brilliant children, being raised by the Organization.” She finally looks back at Shinichi, a look of heartbreakingly deep sorrow. “Not all of them are children of Organization members. They steal children too, brilliant, gifted children. You know how smart Conan is…”

“You think he was kidnapped,” Conan says, feeling sick. _Before_. Conan was being raised by the Organization. To be a scientist, like Shiho? Or to become something like… “I’ve never heard of an epidemic of missing gifted kids—”

“After all this time, you think the Organization’s operations are that obvious?” Akemi tuts, shaking her head. “They don’t just snatch up children in a van, Kudo-kun. Shiho told me about some of the others. There might be a house fire, and a whole family dies, and if they don’t find one child’s corpse, well, they were small and the fire was so bad… a car crash into a river, maybe, a small corpse can be swept away… or the child’s taken while the family’s on holiday, abroad, and the foreign country is blamed for being too dangerous… they don’t care about collateral damage, Kudo-kun. Just getting what they want.”

“That’s why Conan insists he doesn’t have a home to go back to,” Shinichi says quietly. “You think they’re dead?”

“He wouldn’t answer when I asked him,” Akemi sighs, wrapping her arms around her stomach. “He might be brilliant, but he’s six. The trauma could be too much for him to bear talking about, not to mention whatever he had to endure after being taken…”

And just like that, Shinichi’s focus shifts. Avenging his own death has been what’s keeping him together this whole time, keeping him going, giving him a _purpose_.

But it’s already happened. His life is _over_. Conan is still alive, in danger of not just being killed but _taken_, and there are an unknown number of stolen children at stake.

When he lets out a scream of pure horror and frustration and kicks the sign for Poirot, it flies so far down the street that he loses sight of it in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've never read about yurei, I highly recommend it. Yurei stories are a fascinating type of ghost story and let's just say there's more than a little of the concept in this version of the story.


	22. Shuichi I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A ski trip is a normal thing for a kid to go on, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to clarify my previous note: this is not the last chapter! This is just me putting up chapters from the last three days.

Shinichi learned to ski when he was Conan’s age, on holiday in Hokkaido with his parents, and a couple of years later learned to snowboard too. He often preferred that—the ski poles always felt like they got in the way, while it was easier to feel like the snowboard was an extension of his own body, one that let him whip through the cold and snow like he was flying.

Now he _can_ fly, but he doesn’t feel the cold. He wouldn’t feel it if it snowed. But he can feel happy that Conan is getting this normal childhood experience, and he _is_ happy. Mitsuhiko’s sister’s friends don’t look particularly thrilled that one of their group brought a little brother and three other grade-schoolers with her, but the four younger kids are happy to keep themselves entertained while they wait for the bus by swapping Kamen Yaiba cards.

Conan hadn’t even _heard_ of skiing before. He had accepted Mitsuhiko’s invite, then run off alone on the pretext of having a social worker meeting, hid in a secluded part of the park and asked Shinichi and Akemi to tell him all about it. Akemi’s been skiing, too, thanks to her relatively normal upbringing. She was even a university student when she died, and had gone on a ski trip with her friends just a month before.

_He must have been quite young when They took him_, Shinichi thinks. He can feel the anger bubbling inside, fights to control it. He doesn’t need to pop out of thin air here, in front of a crowded bus stop. He needs to save it for when it’ll be _useful_.

The bus arrives, the teenagers file on in an excited, chattering mass, and Mitsuhiko’s sister hangs back to help the younger children show their tickets. Shinichi wants to keep his distance, let Conan have a fun, normal time with his friends, but he’s going to follow anyway, just in case.

An Organization member is out there, pretending to be Dr Araide. It might even be Vermouth, who Akemi said excelled at disguises. She didn’t tell Gin and Vodka that she saw Conan, but she might have told others. The kid isn’t _safe_.

Akemi’s following too, for similar reasons, and her sharp, shocked gasp once she floats onto the bus turns the memory of Shinichi’s guts to lead.

“Is it one of—?” he begins, but Akemi ignores him, shooting to the back of the bus and stopping directly in front of the man sitting directly in the centre of the back row.

Shinichi goes after her, sees her peering at the man’s striking green eyes before lurching backwards, hands clasped over her mouth, tears welling up. “It _is _him,” she whispers.

Shinichi looks over the man. He’s pretty suspicious looking, with his black knit hat, a cold mask covering most of his face except those somewhat unsettling eyes, hunched down into an oversized jacket. “Akemi, is he one of _Them_?” he asks, shaking her arm.

“N-no, he’s… well, yes, he was, but it’s not what you think,” she gets out, stumbling over her words. She reaches out, her hands hovering like she wants to touch him, but she’s afraid of knowing that she can’t. “He… _I_ got him in. He rose fast, even got a codename even though I never did. Rye. We thought it was funny, it rhymed with his name, Dai, but that wasn’t his _real_ name…”

“Akemi, if there’s an Organization member on the same bus as Conan—” Shinichi says urgently, but Akemi quickly shakes her head.

“He was a mole,” she says quickly. “He’s with the FBI, Kudo-kun.” She smiles tremulously. “He’s not a threat to Conan-kun. In fact, he’s probably the farthest thing from.”

Shinichi doesn’t really get time to process that before the bus arrives at its next stop, and Araide Tomoaki gets on.

Since the bus driver can see and speak to this one as he shows his ticket, it’s a safe bet that this is the one who’s a _real_ threat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it seems like Conan's out of focus--he is, and it's on purpose. If Shiho isn't here to sit next to him on the bus, who IS he sitting next to...?


	23. Tomoaki II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's not used to feeling angry. But the feeling can come in handy.

Tomoaki’s not sure why he’s so mad about this woman, _Vermouth_, drinking his father’s whisky. Maybe it’s because the outrage that she _murdered_ him, stole his face and is living in his _house_ is too great to process, so his mind fixates on the whisky instead.

Focusing on the whisky instead of her distracts him from the pain of his fatal head wound. Kudo-kun said it takes a plot of practice to physically influence things. Tomoaki practices by trying to push over her glass every time she sets it down.

She’s skimming reports on some kind of weapons development. At least, Tomoaki thinks it might be weapons. There are a lot of coded terms, acronyms and outright euphemisms in the reports she’s reading. There’s some kind of malfunction affecting the development of… something, which is probably all to the good.

She closes a report and opens something else. There’s a picture at the top. It’s a picture of Conan.

He looks away. He wants to gather some information, something that might help keep people safe, but he can’t stomach just _watching_. His hands itch with the need to do _something_. He’s a doctor, dammit, he’s used to seeing a problem and _doing something about it._

But he can’t do _anything._

Yet.

He focuses on the glass, and smiles in satisfaction as he manages to make the liquid ripple.


	24. Heiji V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

Shinichi is drifting apart from Conan. The boy is sharp, and doesn’t need Shinichi at his side to notice any evidence in his vicinity, so Shinichi will move away from him more and more in investigations, utilizing his invisibility and ease of movement to see what else he can see.

He sees Hattori Heiji doing the same thing, approaching the burnt body at the front of the ship. To Shinichi’s surprise, _Kameda_, not Kanie, is hovering over the corpse.

“Oh, crap… the killer got you, too? That’s why nobody’s seen you?” Shinichi groans, rubbing his face with his hands.

“What?” Kameda says in surprise. “Nobody’s seen me because that’s _my_ body there. I didn’t see you on the ship. Did he kill _you_?”

“No—wait, where have you been? I was starting to think this was a _suicide_, somehow, because I didn’t see a ghost!” Shinichi exclaims. “We need to know who the murderer is!”

Kameda grimaces. “He killed me before putting my body in here and burning it,” he says, gesturing sadly at the body that Hattori’s inspecting, “and I… I didn’t want to be near _her._”

Shinichi rubs his forehead. Samezaki Yoshimi, the bank teller murdered by the Kano gang twenty years ago. She’s downstairs, flitting between her father and her fiance. “Okay… okay, first of all. _Who _killed you?” It can’t be Kano; he’s here too, staying close to Isogai. Shinichi figures her for his daughter, since that’s the best explanation for Kano’s interest in a girl who would have been all of seven when he died, but Kano’s as tight-lipped in death as he must have been in life.

Kameda flinches, pointing past Shinichi. “_Him_,” he whimpers, flying backwards across the dark water as fast as he can to put some distance between himself and his killer.

Shinichi turns and sees Kujirai, sees the gloves on his hands and the wrench in his hands and the way he slowly stalks towards

Hattori, who can’t see Kujirai, who is still crouching over the body, who is _smirking _as he examines it, who has no idea what’s creeping up behind him

Shinichi clutches his head as the memory of pain assaults him and no, no, _no_, he can’t just _watch_ this happen to somebody else!

He can’t touch Hattori but he swipes his arms through the other teenager (_the one still living_) and feels relief when Hattori winces and slaps at his chest, where the omamori must be hanging.

“Ku—?” he begins, looking around, just as Kujirai, realizing he’s about to be noticed, charges, swinging the wrench.

Hattori’s kendo reflexes save him, but he isn’t holding a weapon, so it’s his own arm he has to block the swing with, and he howls in pain as it connects with a horrible _crunch_.

“CONAN!” Shinichi cries, knowing he has to flee and get help—a warning is all he can do for Hattori here. “CONAN! RAISE THE ALARM! HATTORI NEEDS HELP!”

He can hear Hattori shouting for help, and already people are running down the decks to assist.

Later, when Hattori is having his broken arm splinted by Ran while Mouri and the retired officer Samezaki stand guard over Kujirai, Conan drifts into a quiet corner where nobody can see him and passes his little hand through Shinichi’s.

“You did it, Shinichi-niichan,” he whispers. “Heiji-niichan’s safe. You saved him.”

Hattori didn’t die like Shinichi did. The pain in Shinichi’s head has finally receded, and he’s so relieved that he almost sinks through the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hattori is getting SUCH a lecture, conveyed via Conan, about situational awareness


	25. Shuichi II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From worse to worse to, somehow, even worse.

“Araide” sees Conan before Shinichi gets a chance to warn him. Vermouth is playing the part perfectly, asking in a friendly, gentle manner after the girl sitting next to Conan. The boy claims she’s shy.

This is unusual behaviour for Ayumi, but when Shinichi flies over to look, he’s not sitting next to Ayumi. It’s a stranger, gripping the hand of and half-hiding under the arm of a sleeping woman next to her. Conan is meeting “Araide”’s eyes calmly, playing along with a cheerful smile, but Shinichi warned him. He even skipped class on the day that Araide was coming to help with the health checkups. And now they’re trapped on a bus with Vermouth.

And, just to make things worse, at the _very next stop,_ the bus gets hijacked.

“Is it too much to hope that your ex is gonna do something about this?” Shinichi asks Akemi, gesturing to the man sitting in the middle of the back row. His already piercing eyes are narrowed as he watches the kidnappers, but he compliantly turns out his pockets, claims he doesn’t have a phone, and coughs a few times. He’s been doing that pretty consistently since Shinichi first got near him, so either it’s a real cold or he’s just good at not breaking cover.

“He’ll try to keep people from getting hurt,” Akemi says quietly, “but if he’s undercover, he won’t want to break it. If the police can handle this, he’ll let them.”

Vermouth’s a more random element. She seems _very_ serious about keeping character, and she’s certainly done her research, but would she break it to protect her own life? To protect anybody else’s?

She let Conan out of Haido Hotel alive. Will she take risks to keep him alive now? Will she let him die? _What if this was planned and set up _by_ her__—_

Deep breaths. Conspiracy theories help nobody. Be a _detective._ Look at the facts.

The facts are that the kidnappers have taken the kids’ phones, and Conan hasn’t been able to sneak back to his friends. Somehow, the hijackers saw him, even though they weren’t looking back—

—but they can see the rear-view mirror.

A conspirator somewhere aboard. So they’ll see whatever Conan does and relay it to the hijackers, but they won’t see Shinichi.

And the hijackers are holding their gun safely, at least. Fingers off the trigger. And the safety.

The little switch is smaller than a coin.

Shinichi focuses, and does what he can.


	26. Conan II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conan sure doesn't behave like it, but he's met at least one other child before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another double feature because I missed a day for IRL complication reasons! Again, I wanna say enjoy, but...

Conan doesn’t know why the other kids are laughing at his name. Shinichi is increasingly getting the impression that the kid has not spent much time around other children before.

Shinichi’s glad he followed the boy in for his first day of school. It’s the same elementary school that Shinichi attended, so he knows his way around, even if everything looks a lot smaller now. He had to stop Conan from going in with his shoes on and help the boy find his shoe locker.

Shinichi guides the confused-looking boy to his seat and tells him what to get out of his bag. Once settled, he sits ramrod-straight in his chair, completely focused on the teacher as she runs through a few more homeroom announcements.

Conan just grows more confused throughout the day. He focuses completely at whatever he’s pointed at and doesn’t seem to know how to respond at the effusive praise his teacher gives him for finishing his work so quickly.

In a short break between classes, a freckled boy sitting near him asks if he’s from America and that’s why has name is like that. Conan mumbles through a noncommittal answer, but a small girl has already jumped in with a barrage of excited questions about what America is like. Shinichi slips Conan a few answers; if the other kids think Conan’s American, it’ll cover for a _lot_ of weird behaviour.

Conan doesn’t know what playtime is. Luckily, the other kids assume he’s just not familiar with Japanese school language and lead him outside to teach him to play football.

It’s the same playground where Shinichi learned to play football. His parents are somewhat flighty, to put it _charitably_, and his preschool years were somewhat disrupted by going and back forth from Japan to America, where football isn’t the most popular playground sport. But he _loved_ playing football, even though he always knew that it, like everything else, might have to come second to being a detective. He’s wanted to be a detective since he was _two._

For all the good that’s done him.

He drifts through the school, drawn by nostalgia, confident that Conan’s friendlier classmates have him in hand. Most of the teachers have changed, except for the principal. Shinichi has to check that he’s not a ghost, because he’d honestly thought the old man must have died by now, but no, he greets a clearly living teacher as he makes his rounds of the school. The layout and classrooms are unchanged, and Shinichi remembers every one, as he moved from first to sixth grade. He remembers where he sat, and he remembers where Ran sat. He even remembers where Sonoko sat.

Playtime’s almost over, so he returns to the playground to see Conan, and that’s when he sees two more ghosts, hovering by the fence. The sight of two strange adults that the none of the teachers seem to notice is one hint that they’re ghosts. The way Conan’s eyes drift to them is another. A football flying through the man’s stomach is the final confirmation.

The couple has a little girl with them. She’s blonde, like the woman; all of them look very American. “Hi,” Shinichi says as he greets them. “Did you go to this school?”

The man looks startled to be addressed, putting a protective hand on the girl’s head. “S…Sorry,” the woman says in halting Japanese. “Our Japanese… is not…”

“You are American, then,” Shinichi says, switching to English. “What are you doing all the way here?”

“Oh, since our deaths we like to travel,” the woman says, relieved to speak in English. “We can show our little girl the world this way, at least.” She cards her fingers through the hair of the little girl, who’s staring at Shinichi with unabashed curiosity. She doesn’t look any older than Conan.

“Did you know there’s a boy here who can see us?” the man asks, pointing to Conan.

Shinichi nods. “I know,” he says. “Do you know him?”

“Is this a Japanese school?” the little girl asks. “I’m glad he’s going to a normal school now. The one he was in before was _mean_.”

Shinichi thinks of the focus with which Conan works, his confusion at receiving praise or kind words. “Yeah, I got that. I’m a detective,” he adds, holding out his hand. “Shinichi Kudo. Maybe I could help you solve your murders? I mean, I need Conan to help me…”

“No, we don’t want that child mixed up in all that,” the man says, wincing but shaking Shinichi’s hand. “Jonathan Starling. This is my wife Clarisse and our daughter Jodie. And your offer is very kind, but I’m afraid we’ve been dead for a good twenty years now. I’m not sure there’s much that can be done, at this point.”

Shinichi looks down at the little girl, who’s gazing longingly at the soccer game, the skipping games, the tag, all the children her age that she cannot play with, who will grow older without her just like generations before. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he says sincerely.

“We don’t want to interrupt… Conan, is it now?” Clarisse comments. “We’re on our way to see the new Doraemon movie, actually. But do tell him we said hello!”

“Ask if we can play later!” Jodie says, waving as she follows her parents as they flit away down the street. Each of her parents takes one of her hands as they go, as if they’re a normal family, walking down the street to see a movie on a normal day.

The bell rings, bringing Conan and the other living children back inside for class. Shinichi follows them, lost in thought and memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No fake deaths no near misses everybody's dead dave


	27. Shuichi III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From worse to... something.

It takes care and delicacy to put his face through the bags just enough to see inside them without seeing _through_ them, but with care and delicacy, Shinichi can see that the ski bags contain not skis but bombs.

He informs Conan of this unwelcome development. The boy only nods. He’s holding one hand of the girl hiding under her mother’s arm. It’s nice to see Conan reaching out to another kid so easily, after all the trouble he had starting at Teitan Elementary.

He goes to tell Akemi. “They’re going to blow up the bus?” she mutters with a frown. “If it helps, I think she’s their accomplice.” She points to the woman sitting next to Dai. “Most of the other passengers are watching the kidnappers. _She__’s_ watching the other passengers. I… think Dai thinks so too.” Shinichi looks at the man. He’s watching the kidnappers, just like the rest of the passengers, but every few seconds his glance flickers briefly to the woman.

Her bubblegum pops, and a few seconds after she pulls it off of her left cheek, one of the kidnappers goes to a seat on the left side of the bus and yells at one of Mitsuhiko’s sister’s friends, who’d just pulled out an inhaler to breathe through.

Knowing the accomplice doesn’t give him any more of an idea of how to get the kids off the bus safely, but it’s something to plan for.

“Do you think you could go solid again?” he asks, hearing the kidnappers direct the bus driver to head for the tunnel. “It’ll be dark in the tunnel. If we can knock them out—”

“Moving small objects is a little different from cracking skulls,” Akemi objects, “and we don’t know which of the three of them can detonate those bombs—” She’s interrupted by one of the hijackers passing _through_ him as he grabs Dai’s arm, yanking the man out of his seat at gunpoint. Shinichi wonders if the FBI agent has noticed that the gun’s safety is on; the hijacker sure hasn’t.

The other hostage they select is the fake Araide, proving once and for all that these hijackers really do have the worst luck in the world. It’s a shame that each likely thinks the other is a civilian in the line of fire. And that still doesn’t account for the accomplice, and he’s out of time because the bus is going into the darkness.

As soon as it does, the living inhabitants of the bus start blinking rapidly as they attempt to acclimatize to the darkness. All except Conan and the girl next to him, who _move_.

It takes seconds, and Shinichi and Akemi, who don’t need light to see, are transfixed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moving sure is a hell of a lot of work when you can't walk


	28. Sato I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few police officers have ghosts. Shinichi never noticed before, but they're hard to miss now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since it's a touch vague: this is set during manga chapters 189-191, the stadium bomber case where two terrorists hidden amongst the crowd threatened to blow up a football stadium, because it's the first manga case where Sato Miwako appeared.

Shinichi’s seen Sato Miwako before, once or twice. She’s the only female detective in Division One, so it’s hard to mistake her for anybody else. What he’s never seen before are her ghosts.

There are two of them, both young men, and seem to be amusing themselves by critiquing how good the various detectives in the stadium are at going undercover. This gets annoying after maybe two minutes, prompting Shinichi to comment, “hate to break it to you guys, but if none of the _living _detectives have managed to get her to notice them, you two _really_ aren’t going to have any luck.”

“Wait a minute, kid, I’ve seen you,” one of them says, tipping down his sunglasses. “You’re that detective kid, right? Sorry to see you’re dead. When did _that_ happen?”

“A little while ago,” Shinichi says. He still doesn’t like talking about it. “Whoever you are, instead of complaining about the detectives, how about helping me look for the shooter?”

“I’m sorry that you’re new to being dead, detective, but even if we do find the shooter, we aren’t going to be able to do anything about him,” the other man says. He has longer hair and though he isn’t wearing sunglasses, he _is_ wearing a cravat, so he actually looks even _more_ pretentious. “Don’t worry, Jinpei-chan and I are old hat at this.”

“First bit of advice: don’t tell Hagi your name so he can’t give you a ridiculous nickname,” Sunglasses says with a wink.

“…Alright, good news, Bananaman,” Shinichi sighs. “There is exactly one six-year-old in this stadium who _can_ hear us, and he’s friends with Megure-keibu. There’s a handful of other ghosts already looking. Are you in or out?”

“Are you serious? A kid that can _hear_ us?” Cravat says excitedly, grabbing Sunglasses’ shoulder. “If he can hear us, we can tell him about—”

“That asshole can wait,” Sunglasses says darkly. “This is a _different_ asshole, and he’s got fifty-six thousand hostages. Co-ordinate us, kid, where do you want us watching?”

“My name’s Kudo Shinichi, not kid,” Shinichi can’t help snapping. He didn’t like being patronized when he was _alive_, and it’s even more grating now, when his conversational options are already limited. “I’m dead. I’m as old as I’m getting. Stop judging the detectives and go detect around sections C and D, and find the front-row kid with big glasses and a couple ghosts hanging over his head to tell him if you see anything, okay?”

“Yes, _sir_,” Sunglasses says, throwing off half a police salute before flying off with Cravat to haunt the stands.

Shinichi goes back to searching. He’ll worry about who those two are later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bananaman are Japanese sketch comedians who host TV these days, but are still famous for their sketch comedy. Shinichi should totally ask these guys if they've ever visited their buddies from police academy, huh


	29. Sister

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's no escaping family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a hectic few days of moving so I didn't quite get to doing a full 31 parts for this or get to tighten and polish this part as much as I'd like but... Happy Hallowe'en!

When the bus exits the tunnel, what most passengers see is the two hijackers on the ground, unconscious, along with a female passenger from the back. One of the men who was picked up as a hostage, the one with a cold mask and evil eyes, is quick to disarm the unconscious hijackers, while the doctor scrambles to tell the bus driver that it’s safe to pull over.

In the dark of the tunnel, only Shinichi and Akemi could see clearly who knocked the hijackers out with efficiency and precision. They have questions, and they can’t ask them with so many people around. But they can continue to watch.

The bus stops, and passengers scramble to dismount, though Mitsuhiko’s sister responsibly takes the time to count out the four children and make sure they get off the bus with her. They’re closely followed by the girl Conan was sitting next to, tightly gripping her mother’s hand. The woman is finally awake, but is staring blankly into the distance as she walks off the bus, almost pulled by the hand by the little girl.

In all the chaos and confusion of the passengers fleeing the bus, the police trying to corral them and get aboard the bus to find the hijackers, Conan and the girl slip away behind two parked cars, where nobody is watching. The girl’s mother, or at least the woman whose hand she’s holding, follows, towed like an empty-eyed balloon.

“I really did miss you, Rokudai,” the girl says, reaching out a hand. Conan steps back, and she retracts it. “I’m not trying to—”

“You could be lying,” Conan says flatly. “I’m not going back, Godai. You can’t make me.”

“I _wouldn__’t_,” the little girl says, stomping her foot in frustration. “I’m not going back either! I want to know how you did it, Rokudai. How you stayed hidden.” Conan sticks his hands in his pockets, expression unchanging. “Did _they_ help you?” the girl presses. “The ghosts?”

Both Shinichi and Akemi start at that. Shinichi leans down wave a hand in the little girl’s face, trying to look under her hood to see if she’s looking at him, and is brought up short by her face.

She’s Conan. The same eyes, the same shape to her face, hair a little longer but if they swapped clothes, nobody would know the difference, though now that they’re standing up he can see that she’s taller than him by maybe three inches.

“She can’t see you,” Conan says bitterly. “None of you ever believed me. Don’t pretend you do now.”

“Absinthe said you were lying,” the girl says, looking down. Shinichi starts at the name. _Absinthe. Alcohol. One of Them. _“Absinthe says… but Sandai says Absinthe _lies_. All the time, she says. So we do what we’re told. But _you_ left, you don’t have to—”

“Vermouth’s following me,” Conan cuts her off. “My friends warned me. She’s just gonna bring me back soon anyway, and then _I__’m _gonna be in trouble. You and Sandai shouldn’t be in trouble too.”

“It’s not just me and Sandai!” the girl argues. “Shidai misses you too—I don’t think he _believes_ you, but he doesn’t like it that Absinthe says that if you talked to the cops you’re not our brother any more, just like that. And Nanadai and Hachidai miss you too but they’re confused ‘cause Absinthe told them one thing and Sandai says different—” She throws up her hands and, in doing so, lets go of the hand of the woman she was holding onto. The woman sways on her feet, blinking as if waking up from a deep sleep, then looks around in confusion.

“Oh, hello, children,” she says, sounding bemused. She looks at the police cars. “What’s happening? Are you alright?”

“She doesn’t remember what happened on the bus,” Shinichi realizes. “Conan, what the _hell_?”

“Oh my god,” Akemi whispers, swearing under her breath in English a few times. Conan immediately reverts to the “just a normal child” facade that he’s become adept at, and the girl somewhat awkwardly mimics him. “We’ve had it all wrong, Kudo-kun. They were just a rumour, I thought, but they’re _real_—”

“Akemi, what the hell are you talking about?” Shinichi asks. The girl tries to take the woman’s hand again, but is ignored as the woman waves to a police officer to ask what’s happening. “_Who _are real?”

“Listen to what they called each other, the other names she mentioned,” Akemi says, starting to count on her fingers from three. “Sandai. Shidai. Godai. Rokudai. Nanadai. Hachidai. _Absinthe_.”

“They’re children, not cars,” Shinichi points out, though an awful dread is curdling in him. _“_You think they’re kidnapped children? That they’ve _numbered_ the children they kidnapped?” _Counting them like machines instead of people, like _things_—_

Conan and the girl had moved _so_ fast. They’d moved in the first few seconds of darkness before their eyes could possibly have adjusted, cracked down on the backs of the hijackers’ heads with almost impossible precision. They had to have planned the motions before the bus entered the tunnel, been able to go through the moves without being able to see.

“I don’t think they were kidnapped, Kudo-kun,” Akemi says quietly. One of the police officers has recognized Conan and is ushering him and the girl back to the group of passengers waiting to be questioned, back to Conan’s _normal_ friends, back where Vermouth-as-Araide can watch them out of the corner of her eye while she lies fluently to a police officer. Dai is watching them too with a narrow, intense glare. “And look at them. The same face. I don’t think they were kidnapped. I think they were _made_. Rumour is that the Organization was looking into genetically engineering and raising purpose-built assassins… and I think those rumours were true. Are they, Conan?” she asks, her voice starting to shake.

Conan doesn’t look up, but to the eyes of anybody else, he nods at nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey look I didn't kill everybody this time! Though there WILL be more to this story and this time I mean it. For now, though, good luck to everybody doing Nano this month...
> 
> There are a TON of ways of counting different things in Japanese. To count people, you use the suffix -nin from the number three--so it would go "hitori, futari, sannin, yonnin, gonin" etc. The suffix -dai is for counting mechanical objects like cars, games consoles... or weapons.


End file.
